DVD surrender a black eye for Toshiba star

By Mayumi Negishi

Bad news never seemed to faze Yoshihide Fujii, the gregarious head of Japanese electronic conglomerate Toshiba Corp's (6502.T: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) consumer electronics business.

Ask him about slow sales of high-definition HD DVD players in North America -- the DVD format Toshiba pulled the plug on Tuesday -- and he would talk about demand for HD DVD drives piggy-backing on Toshiba PCs.

Question who would pay the 398,000 yen ($3,700) price tag for a HD DVD recorder, and he would say, "I would buy this product even for 1 million yen".

But Fujii's tough talking stopped abruptly after Time Warner Inc's (TWX.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) Warner Bros studios defected in January from the HD DVD camp and said it would only put high-definition editions of its movies on the rival Blu-ray format pushed by Sony Corp (6758.T: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) and Matsushita (6752.T: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz).

The next day, Fujii axed a trip to the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas and a HD DVD promotional event. Warner Bros' huge film library meant 70 percent of Hollywood was now backing Blu-ray and pundits predicted the end was nigh for HD DVD.

"That's not the Fujii-san I know," said a Sony official, who described Fujii as a "tenacious and charming" builder of alliances who helped seal an earlier partnership with Sony to build the Cell microchip, now used in Sony's PlayStation 3 game console.

Fujii was a star in the microchip division for Toshiba, a conglomerate whose products range from nuclear power stations to refrigerators.

But success did not follow when he switched to the lackluster consumer electronics division in 2004 to head Toshiba's search for a hit product like Apple's (AAPL.O: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) iPod.