Sony chief executive Sir Howard Stringer took the stage on Thursday morning for the official kick-off of the Consumer Electronics Show (Gates only gets the "pre-show keynote").

The Welshman is the first non-Japanese executive at Sony. And he brought some much needed humour to the company.

The company launched all its new products on Wednesday at a press conference. But Stringer got to do it all over again. Here: the new W810 Walkman mobile phone.

Another one of yesterday's announcements: the Sony Reader, a device that downloads and displays ebooks. Shipping later this spring.

Stringer takes the reader for a ride...

... and then pulls Dan Brown on stage, the author of the hit novel "The Da Vinci Code" to talk up digital books.

Moving back to terra cognita, Stringer plays around with the hugely successful PSP. And can't help but point out that it outsold the Xbox 360 in the past holiday season.

But the Da Vinci Code would come back with a vengeance. The book is being made into a movie staring Tom Hanks as the lead character. "I just got in to town this morning, so I need a goodie bag or gambling money," Hanks quipped.

In an effort to please his host, he then started pitching all kinds of random Sony products while pretending to be reading off the teleprompter.

Moving to high definition television, Stringer was joined by some host of some sports show (can you tell that we don't really care about sports shows. And after Tom Hanks, we already had our celebrity shot). But he did mention that a golf game in HD is much more interesting.

Dell founder Michael Dell was brought on to talk up the Blu-ray high definition DVD standard. But Dell used the occasion to tout his company's television business. Stringer quickly recovered: "If you want a really expensive laptop, buy a [Sony] Vaio."

And speaking of Blu-ray, did Stringer mention that the forthcoming PS3 gaming console will support the standard? Well, he did now.

Tags: CES, psp3, sony, howard stringer

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