Several reports early in the week painted a somewhat contradictory picture of Sony Corp.’s market strategy as another recession-era holiday shopping season gets underway.

On one hand were reports from Reuters (News - Alert) (via Yahoo News) and Nikkei.com, that predicted an optimistic near-term future for Sony’s growth. Reuters said the electronics manufacturer has its sights set on boosting sales 30 percent of personal computers and TVs in emerging economics for 2010.

Those markets include India and Brazil, where double-digit sales growth has been recorded, Reuters reporter Soham Chatterjee said, quoting Sony’s chief financial officer, Masaru Kato.

To some extent, Sony’s recent financial success (it was back in the black for fiscal 2010 second quarter, ended Sept. 30) seems to have given the company a boost of confidence; Reuters reported that Kato is also looking at investing in LCD panels “using large, 11th-generation glass substrates through a joint venture with South Korean firm Samsung (News - Alert) Electronics Co.”

Nikkei.com painted an equally rosy-colored picture in a report indicating that Sony is hoping its sales of professional audiovisual equipment will reach 500 billion yen ($6.2 million) by 2015—which would be a 70 percent increase over 2009. If realized, that growth would be due to sales not only in the U.S., Europe and Japan but also Brazil, China and India.

Other reports indicated that Sony Corp. is being somewhat cautious, and that overall the strategy is conservative rather than ambitious. The Wall Street Journal, for example, said that a soft economy in North America has given Sony pause, especially related to the sale of TVs; the company “plans to maintain tight inventory controls heading into the crucial year-end holiday shopping season with no intention of becoming ‘adventurous’ in its supply chain management.”

“If we don't find consumers for whatever it is that we produce, then we won't produce it,” Kato was quoted as saying in the Wall Street Journal report. “Pushing products into the market without consumers is not the business that we are in.”

Sony’s main rivals in the TV market, Samsung and LG, are also expecting a competitive holiday season “because manufacturers are sitting on excess inventory from aggressive growth targets,” Wall Street Journal reporter Daisuke Wakabayashi said. Earlier, Sony predicted its TV division would be profitable by March 2011, but is now backpedaling about meeting that goal.

On balance, it’s probably fair to say that the tone at Sony Corp. is cautiously optimistic. The company seems to be acting conservatively in response to market conditions, but has the capability to ramp production up when the economy recovers.