Sony CEO: We’re totally working on “a different kind of TV set”

Following Apple’s lead, Sony says it’s been working on a next-generation TV.

Sony CEO Howard Stringer revealed that the company has been investing heavily in reinventing the TV as we know it, despite suffering massive losses in the TV business, the Wall Street Journal reports.

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Speaking at a breakfast Thursday morning, Stringer said, “There’s a tremendous amount of R&D going into a different kind of TV set.” He later added that he had “no doubt” that Steve Jobs was working on a TV set for Apple before he died, and that, “We can’t continue selling TV sets [the way we have]. Every TV set we all make loses money.”

Of course, Stringer didn’t give any details about what we can expect from Sony’s next-generation TV, so we’re just as much in the dark as we are about Apple’s TV plans. Rumors are swirling that Apple could integrate its Siri voice commands into its future TV sets, and they’re also expected to pack in the same functionality as the Apple TV set-top box.

Stringer admitted that he underestimated how difficult it would be to get programming ready for 3D TVs — a problem that needs to be solved for 3D TVs to truly take off, he said.

At this point, it’s difficult to imagine what future TVs will look like. Current trends are focusing on making TVs as thin as possible, and TV manufacturers will continue to keep pushing 3D as much as possible. But it’s good to hear that Sony has been investing heavily in figuring out the future of TV, especially since it lost ground in the current generation of flat-panel displays to the likes of Samsung and LG.