HONG KONG -- Sony chief executive Howard Stringer promised Thursday that the iconic Japanese corporation has learned from its mistakes and is on the road to recovery after a series of mishaps.

Rallying the troops at a Tokyo shareholder meeting, Stringer described himself as a "Sony Warrior." He thrilled the 7,000 shareholders present by insisting that company's near unique and often criticized stretch from hardware to entertainment software would be vindicated in coming years.

"In the digital age, we have new competitors -- not just consumer electronics companies but IT companies like Apple and Microsoft and Intel and Chinese companies," Stringer said. "The integrated approach to this competition using electronics, games and entertainment, seamlessly integrated with software, will be the best way to be the dominant company," he said.

"We will shift Sony from recovery to profitable growth," Stringer said. He promised to turn the PlayStation3 into a profit center, despite its difficult start and consumer resistance to its high price.

At the meeting other execs pointed to flat screen TVs and digital cameras as reasons that company is on track to deliver surging earnings in its current fiscal year to March 2008.

"All the (PS3) production problems have been solved. We are making a comeback already," said Stringer, promising to boost game offerings and bolster the machine's networking platform. Sony sold 5.5 million consoles in its last financial year, less than its target and slightly fewer than surprise games hit, the Wii from Nintendo.

Stringer even promised a comeback in the portable music player market, where its Walkman once stood tall. "More and more customers are getting their music downloads on their mobile phones, and in this case, the Sony-Ericsson mobile phone is a great success and we have sold as many of them as ipods," he said.

(Associated Press contributed to this report.)

© Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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