Sony Says It’s Ready for U.S. PC Market’s Rough Road : Computers: The company failed in the U.S. workstation business, and other Japanese firms have had it tough here.

Japanese consumer electronics giant Sony Corp. will enter the already crowded U.S. personal computer business next year with a line of machines targeted at the home market.

The announcement at the Comdex computer trade show here is the latest example of the gradual convergence of the computer and consumer electronics industries. It also reflects the continued enthusiasm surrounding the home market, which had long been the poor cousin of the business computing sector but has taken center stage over the past 18 months.

Sony says its expertise in audiovisual technology will enable it to differentiate its PC, which will be entering a market crowded with dozens of nearly identical products. Like many of its soon-to-be rivals, Sony will purchase the main circuit boards, including the microprocessor, from Intel Corp., and the machines will use Windows 95 software from Microsoft Corp. Sony and Intel also announced a vaguely defined agreement to cooperate in PC technology development. The machines are scheduled to be available for the back-to-school shopping season next summer.

“We decided that we would only go into this business if we could make a meaningful impact over time,” said Carl J. Yankowski, president and chief operating officer for Sony Electronics Inc. of Park Ridge, N.J., a division of the Japanese firm. “We hope to use our expertise in audiovisual technology to generate products that haven’t been dreamed of yet.”

Although Sony is a leading maker of computer components such as disk drives and monitors--and has at times manufactured portable computers for U.S. companies such as Dell Computer Corp. and Apple Computer Inc.--the Japanese company has never been successful here with computers marketed under its own label.

In the mid-1980s, Sony made powerful desktop workstations for the U.S. market, but the division was eventually relocated to Japan. “The line wasn’t competitive,” Yankowski conceded. And industry analysts say Sony’s hand-held computer--the Magic Link--has yet to sell in large numbers.

But Sony is a powerful brand name with consumers, and it has shown it can still jump into new markets with grace: The company earlier this year unveiled the Playstation, its first video game player, and the machine quickly established itself as the hottest product on the market. Analysts say a slick new computer at a competitive price could quickly find a following among consumers who already own Sony Walkmans, VCRs, stereos and camcorders.

But it won’t be easy. Margins are razor-thin in the PC market, and product cycles--the length of time in which a model remains on the shelf before being displaced by something new--are less than a year. Historically, Japanese companies have had trouble keeping pace, often introducing machines later than the rest of the market and at higher prices because many critical decisions have been made in Japan--far from the U.S. buyer. Portable computers are the only segment in which Japanese companies have excelled.

The new Sony PCs will be jointly designed by a U.S.-based consumer electronics division and by Japan-based engineering teams specializing in audio and visual technologies.

*

Sony is a strong proponent of the serial digital interface, a printed circuit board that permits computers, peripherals such as printers, and consumer electronics such as VCRs to be connected in a network. Sony is the first company to ship devices that incorporate this technology. Sony’s computers will also probably use its high-resolution monitors to display multimedia.

“Sony’s got a good brand name,” said Steve Ballmer, senior vice president at Microsoft. “But it’s a very tough business--tough to gain share and tough to make money.”

Competitors, for their part, are more than ready. “The pace is much different than Sony is used to,” said Michael Culver, senior director at Acer America, one of the few Asian companies to do well in PCs.

“Just having a good product isn’t enough, and it takes more than a good brand name to be successful,” he said.