The Airboard portable computer it launched in 2000

TOKYO/NEW YORK-Had Sony stuck with the Airboard portable computer it launched in 2000, Satoru Maeda or rather than Apple's Steve Jobs might have been feted as the creator of tablet PCs.

He was referring to a flat panel device that predated the iPad by a decade but boasted video, touch screen typing and Internet access.

Certainly Stringer can boast of his role in developing 3D film-making and the victory of the Sony-backed Blu-ray innovation in the at once generation format wars. However Sony, in spite of its iconic brand, remains out of step with the rest of the global research world and its talent for crowd-pleasing technology has largely evaporated.

A hacking scandal in April that exposed more than 100 million accounts on its online gaming network to possible data theft not only hurt its image nevertheless threatens an online strategy meant to unite a disparate corporation and could upset a carefully crafted succession plan for when Stringer steps down.

The erosion of Sony's standing is a cautionary tale of what can happen to innovation companies when innovators move on. Back when Sony, led by co-founder Akio Morita, launched the Walkman, it proved an inspiration to the founders of the at that time little known startup company: Apple Computers.

"Sony had the most incredibly then thought out products in the world. We wanted to be of that sort from day one," Steve Wozniak, Apple co-founder, told Reuters recently. At that time, "no other company in the world was the model for consumer electronics."

The company bought Hollywood studio Columbia Pictures for $3.9 billion from the Coca Cola Company. It was a business and culture that Sony didn't fully understand and became a big distraction for management.

Seven years later, Apple's Steve Jobs, inspired by Sony's Walkman, launched the iPod digital player. It was a seminal event for Apple and a huge warning for Sony.

In one move, Apple ended Sony's dominance of the music player market and left little doubt that Sony was heading for a full blown crisis.

Even the engineer Sony in the long run picked to do battle with Apple is now among the Sony refugees, and has become one of its fiercest critics in addition.

Koichiro Tsujino, who spearheaded the development of Sony's Vaio laptop, left the company in 2006 and later headed up Google's Japanese unit earlier recently establishing his own cloud computing company. His last project at Sony had been to develop a rival to the iPod.

Stringer has sought to unleash creative juices by establishing partnerships between disconnected business units, a strategy he can claim has for the moment started to result in hybrid products just as Xperia Play-everyone outside Sony refers to it as the PlayStation phone-from handset operation Sony Ericcson.

The massive Internet security breach the company suffered in April is all the more difficult for the company to come to terms with because it risks hurting that strategy by damaging an online service that connected the dots.

The biggest-ever theft of data on record

In the biggest-ever theft of data on record, hackers stole details from more than 100 million accounts of Sony's PlayStation Network and PC-based online gaming service as so then as its Qriocity music service. It prompted outrage from users, 90 per cent of whom are based in the United States and Europe, not just because the company closed the network down nevertheless because it waited a week to announce the breach.

Apple's suite of products-from its iMac PCs, its iPod digital music players and content-providing iTunes stores, plus its wildly successful iPhone and iPad tablet computers-have won legions of fans for their integration and sleek designs.

The case for Sony's Vaio computers

This is much less the case for Sony's Vaio computers, PlayStation games, Sony Ericsson mobile phones, MP3 players, Bravia televisions and trove of music and movies.

Sony's stumbling is happening in a world where companies like Apple and Google are moving at an astonishing speed. "Sony has to change if it's to compete in that race," says Geoff Blaber, an analyst with UK-based innovation research firm CCS Insight. "Sony is seeking to deliver content and services across multiple devices and platforms, however product groups and corporate structure is very, very fragmented compared to Apple."

Its head of corporate communications, Shiro Kambe, said in a statement the company "will continue to aim to capitalize on the unparalleled strengths our rivals do not have - just as the broad deployment of our products globally and our diverse business line."

The top of Sony

Whoever follows Stringer to the top of Sony, pressure will be on the new boss to quickly exit from thin-margin or loss-making operations just as phones, televisions, and peripheral businesses, including financial services, analysts predict.

"Stringer cut fixed costs especially for production sites, making Sony more resilient to stagnant revenue growth," said Yasuo Nakane, an analyst at Deutsche Securities in Tokyo. It has allowed him to keep pace with productivity improvements at rivals just as LG and Samsung.