We kind of knew this was coming, but sure enough, Sony just reported a $1 billion dollar annual loss. This is the first down year in over 14 years. Thankfully the loss was slightly less at $1.03 billion than the forecasted $1.1 billion, but that’s still a lot of missing cake. The loss was caused by a 17% decline in electronic sales, 18% in the gaming segment, and the appreciation of the Yen. Plus, the Sony-Erricson partnership isn’t doing so hot either. The company is taking steps in the right direction though.
Sony took steps back in January to improve its financial when the news broke back in January about the potential massive write-down. There have already been widespread layoffs, plants shut down, and the natural decrease in hardware cost in existing products like the PS3. Even with all these changes, and the others we don’t know about, Sony expects the current fiscal year which ends in 2010 to have an even larger loss of $1.57 billion. Damn.
A Sony cell phone would have been much more appealing to me than the current Sony-Ericsson one. I have known Sony’s good stuff all my life, but what is Ericsson?
As a former Sony person, I’m sorry to see / hear about the less-than-enviable financial status of the company. Clearly, this is a passing phase which we will all be glad to see the end of – in the interim, this is probably as good a time as any to revisit some of the highlights of Sony Design :
http://thinkmoreinc.wordpress.com/2009/05/17/81/