Link: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2014-09-17-sony-quadruples-forecast-loss-for-financial-year

Sony quadruples forecast loss for financial year

Xperia smartphones to blame.

By Wesley Yin-Poole Published Wednesday, 17 September 2014

PlayStation maker Sony has quadrupled the amount of money it expects to lose this financial year in a profit warning it blamed on smartphones.

I'll give you four quid if you take these smartphones off my hands.

Sony described it as "the impairment of goodwill in the mobile communications segment", which means it had another look at its Xperia smartphones business and found it in even worse shape than it thought it was in.

The impairment amounts to 180 billion yen - or a whopping £1.04 billion - and this is how it affects Sony's bottom line: in July the company said it expected to make a loss of 50 billion yen for the financial year. Now, it reckons it'll make a loss of 230 billion yen - or £1.3 billion. It now expects an operating loss of 40 billion yen instead of the 140 billion yen profit it forecast in July.

While the PlayStation business - fuelled by the success of PlayStation 4 - continues to perform well, the wider Sony Corporation is struggling. This is the sixth downward revision under boss Kaz Hirai, who took the top job on in 2012 promising to return the company to profit.

Something needs to be done about those pesky smartphones, then. Reuters suggests sales of the Xperia have suffered in the US in particular because they're only available on T-Mobile there - the fourth largest carrier. Sony's answer is to focus on its premium lineup and reduce the number of mid-range models.

Imo fuck em all.

They should sale of ditch fire everything but PS financial and movies, rest is crap that needs to be unloaded.

Really Sony, just drop the smartphone & tablet. Wait i thought they dropped!

It would be a shame as these devices seem to be good but sadly just too expensive to make people buy them instead of Samsung...

Kaz, accept Volcano of bucket!!

Sheesh, imagine what would have happened if PS4 sales were meh, man the stakes are high

The ironic thing is, the experia z1 z2 and no doubt the z3 are really good phones.
But seriously, with them losses how is this company avoiding liquidation? How is it still afloat? I don't want to see it go down as I do like sony but they've got to obviously sell parts of there business and focus on whats making money!

The only companies making money with smartphones now are Apple and the Chinese companies even Samsung is starting to suffer from lagging smartphone sales and they are number 1 in sales.

All consumer electronics are in massive decline, Smartphones are being taken over by cheap Chinese ones (excluding Apple) and tablets are the new netbook (wait till the iPhone 6/6+ kills the iPad mini).

Sony has 8 segments and they need to get rid of 2, Mobile Communications and Home Entertainment & Sound.

Everything else is fine. it's just those to drag everything down through to many models and every quarter too much leftover stock.

Strangley enough I barely see any Xperia deals or even the phones themselves where I live. So from that I would have assumed it was selling bad. I still want one though.

As for the company themselves, I honestly feel Sony are on their last legs lately. PS4 has been their best asset but imagine if it didnt do well.