9. A board member --Continued—

9. A board member --Continued—

 

- It was August 1995, I was assigned as President of Sony Personal Information Company,

USA, I have felt this business will not be succeed since too many new technologies to be

completed and a lot of investment required to kick-off the entire General Magic services

together with AT&T and Motorola.

At the same time, the Internet become popular method of communication through PC,

speed of MODEM becoming much faster than 2400bauds. The price of memories become

much more acceptable to use and the size is also getting smaller.

Whereas the development of General Magic technologies are somewhat too slow to develop

and missed opportunities in getting to enter home communication market.

So, I made a request with a board member to have one-on-one discussion on this subject and

strongly recommended him to shut it down business. He told me that he could not decide

this in August since Mr. N. Ohga and Mr. M. Schulhof are strong supporter of this project.

I asked him to make a decision but he did not. I told him that I will come back to see him

on Sep 1995 of which I have done and he finally made a decision to close this business.

I felt that the top management often lost a track on what is happening outside of our own territories and make itself with blinkered. The are many technological development required to make success businesses and relying on these with other companies such as semi-conductor companies, networking companies, software developers etc. I would think we looked this business as a small innovation required compared to such huge innovations.