The quote, from Italy’s Il Sole 24 Ore, is a sort of sad double entendre: The question is set up as a broad query about the state of the consumer electronics industry, but Stringer’s answer sounds more like an off-record confession about his own company than a cool assessment of its industry. From Sony’s point of view, the CE industry hasn’t started to turn around; from Sony’s point of view, Sony hasn’t started to turn around: whichever was meant, these aren’t the most reassuring words to hear from the head honcho of one of the largest electronics companies in the world.

Anyway, cheer up Howard! People will buy your consoles to play games and sim-kill civilian hostages for Christmas! It’s how things are. [Reuters via Digital Daily]

(Click on the image to see it bigger.)

I have no idea whether or not all of the stats are true, but I believe the shit out of them. Peach versus baby blue is the new good versus evil. Apply haphazard census information to a bathroom guy graphic and it’s un-freggin-questionable. That’s the bathroom guy, after all. He’s never abused my trust by leading me into a women’s restroom only to laugh and laugh while recording the event for a little YouTube subscriber bait.

That’s restraint.

Having flown both types of carriers, I’d have never known that a company like Air France has 10 times the staff of a company like EasyJet. And I don’t know the last time I was served a meal on a non-international flight, no matter how large or expensive the carrier or ticket. [Flickr via Digg]

“This,” in case your index finger is tired, is an announcement from the company that they expect their 2009 earnings report to show a decline in revenue, despite expectation for a 10% increase. It might sound surprising, but it’s matter a perspective. To a lot of us, HTC bears the scent of a lean up and comer. That’s not at all what they are, which is why this all makes sense:

HTC is the world’s largest maker of phones using Microsoft Corp.’s operating system, in terms of shipments… “The outlook has softened for the second half of the year, with June being the turning point for HTC as it faced a lot of competition from Apple,” said Yuanta Securities analyst Vincent Chen.

The company’s trying to play this off as a matter of product delays “lower than expected” contract orders and the like, and analysts are pointing to other companies entering the fledgling Android space, but internationally, HTC lives and dies by Window Mobile. It’s not the greatest position to be in, and one they’re trying to move from, but as far as 2009 goes, that’s their story. [WSJ]

That’s the situation now in Japan, where industrial production has sunk by 40%, leaving scores of mechanised workers with nothing to do. So, they sit.

It gets worse (for robots): industrial robot sales fell by around 60% in the first quarter of the year, which will have unfortunately effects for people outside of the manufacturing world. Why? Who do you think pays for all those ridiculous robot vanity projects we always write about? Yup, it’s the same guys who can’t move any Catalytic Converters Assemblybot 3000s. Basically, not only will robots continue to lose their jobs—as a genus, if we can call them that, they’ll actually start to get less cool.

In a broader context, this is also kind of disturbing. A large, newly-unemployed population with few prospects and a precarious political climate is the classic recipe for the rise of totalitarianism. A large, newly-unemployed robot population with few prospects and a precarious political climate? I don’t like the sound of that one bit. [NYT]

Only—you guessed it—Windows Mobile device users will have their data plans reimbursed. It may sound fishy at first (Bill Gates banning iPods in his house, anyone?), but you have to remember that many companies offer no such perk for their employees to begin with. The economy being what it is, such a cut in employee benefits wouldn’t be out of line for any tech company. [Business Insider]

From the press release:

Judges were particularly impressed with the level of innovation and attention to detail given to all aspects of the seat. The design process clearly considered all features from the materials and aesthetics right through to the revolutionary footrest net, recline space and user interface of the entertainment unit. The environmental aspects of flying were also considered with lightweight carbon fibre selected to help reduce weight.

There are 332 of these economy seats on the Qantas A380, so when you next happen to be flying to LA, make sure you check out that revolutionary footrest. It might just change your life.

[International Design Awards]

The Japanese have vending machines dispensing treats when an emergency strikes and the British, not to be outdone, now have one that dispenses snacks when the BBC reports something bad about the economy.

The machine hack is actually an art project designed and created by Ellie Harrison as part of her residency at the Plymouth College of Art. The little monitor you see at the right is actually tracking the BBC’s RSS feed, and whenever the aforementioned doom and gloom comes over the wire, someone’s getting something sugary.

The innards were programmed by Ben Dembroski using PureData and Python, while project2891 was implemented alongside i-DAT to activate messaging on the GreenScreen. In other words, free candy! And, this thing must get refilled, a lot. [Ellie Harrison via Make via noquedanblogs- Thanks, Sabino]

Last month China announced a wide-reaching stimulus plan mostly centered around infrastructure development, many parts of which wouldn’t sound totally unfamiliar to anyone who’s been watching the news here for the last few months. Buried in a corner of the plan, though, is a home appliance and electronics subsidy for rural farmers. China has about 1.3 billion citizens, so it’s not hard to see what’s happening here: Demand for small-to-medium LCD screens is being driven up (don’t worry, big HDTVs are fine), seeing a hike of around 4%-5% during March alone.

Now, these kinds of things tend to resolve themselves before too long, and those price increases I mentioned are just for LCD panel components, not whole monitors. But the analyst Nikkei spoke to doesn’t see prices even stabilising for at least another month, and expects another moderate increase in prices come May—quite possibly passing the threshold that’ll force manufacturers to increase their whole-product prices.

When or how this’ll be reflected in your LCD screen aisle at Best Buy remains to be seen, but if you see a small bump in prices, hey, at least you’ll know you’re not just getting gouged. [Tech-on]