Sony is girding itself for an all-out drive to put its 3D technology in sitting rooms and cinemas around the world as the Japanese group attempts to claw its way back into profit and lead a “new frontier” of technology before South Korean and American rivals get in on the act.

The group’s grandiose plans to dominate 3D were laid out as part of an attempt by Sir Howard Stringer, its chief executive, to persuade the market that a programme of 330 billion yen (£2.23 billion) in cost savings, 20,000 job cuts and a management overhaul, was starting to work, despite a strong yen and weak American consumption.

Still rumbling towards a second year of losses and extending profitability targets by another two years, Sony unveiled projects that included entering the market for lithium batteries for electric cars and winning a 40 per cent share of the growing market for handheld e-reader digital books. Outsourcing of television production will double from 20 per cent to 40 per cent by 2011, Sony said. The company also described plans to provide an array of online services for televisions — temporarily dubbed Sony Online Services (SOS), such as software upgrades and streamed entertainment. The company believes that those services could produce a Y300 billion annual revenue stream by 2013.

Sony’s blueprint for the world’s switch to 3D, which it touted yesterday in Tokyo with images of footballs sailing through the TV and into the living room, would see the company crafting itself as a one-stop-shop for all stages of 3D entertainment.

Sony envisages itself selling the specialist cameras to television and movie producers, the movies themselves, the 3D conversion software to games developers, the 3D projectors to cinemas and the home-viewing equipment to the general public. The company hopes to put its PlayStation3 console at the heart of its strategy, and said that any unit sold after 2006 would be able to play 3D content.

The move was described by one investor as perhaps the biggest gamble of Sir Howard’s four years in charge of the floundering electronics and entertainment group. The plan works only if his hunch is right and the world comes to embrace 3D entertainment — a process expected to start with serious gamers before the family is prepared to settle down to a night of television in a pair of viewing goggles.

The 3D plan represents the next step of Sir Howard’s quest to repair the worst aspects of Sony’s old culture: territorialism between divisions that meant that its electronics, game and movie divisions rarely added any value to each other. Sony continues to smart financially and psychologically from its failure to prevent Apple conquering the market for portable digital music players, a mistake that Sir Howard blames on Sony’s previous regime for recognising too late the need to make its products open and networked. “This is a new Sony,” he said yesterday. “The team is as digitally connected as our devices are.”

The company said that it aims to generate more than $11 billion (£6.61 billion) in annual sales from the full range of 3D products. The company is understood to have received orders for more than 10,000 3D projectors from cinema operators across the US. Analysts described Sir Howard’s strategy as “realistic”, given the circumstances. Sony recently trimmed its projected losses for the financial year to Y95 billion, revealing that it had managed to achieve 80 per cent of its expected cost-cutting for fiscal 2009 by the half-year mark.

However, Fitch, the credit rating agency, yesterday downgraded Sony to BBB and left a negative outlook on the company. In common with other Japanese exporters, Sony is a victim of the rising yen. Its South Korean rival Samsung, meanwhile, has benefited enormously from the weaker won — a competitive edge ensured by constant market intervention by the Korean Government on behalf of, among others, its national electronics hero.

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