| mountaindewslave said: problem is they don't sell that many and even if they are technically making money on each unit sold that is extremely unlikely to make up for the investment costs in designing and developing the phone.... no one should assume that Sony expected to sell so few, they didn't. it works fine for Samsung to make that amount per phone sold on average because they sell far more phones than anywhere else on the planet. I am confused how the likes of LG stay in business though, maybe they get special big contract bonuses with cell phone providers (Verizon, AT&T, etc.) that equates to them getting more income and not needing to make money on each one sold as I do constantly see LG phones available affordably for many providers |
Actually if it hadn't been for currency fluctuations, Sony's mobile division would've made a profit in FY2015 (and they certainly had R&D costs in FY2015), and they will likely make a profit either way in FY2016. They have pretty much reached the point where their mobile division can yield modest profits. Likely not a big sum, but it's (probably) in the black. The true test will be their forecast for FY16 (we should get financial results for Q4, along with forecasts for FY16 around the start of may.)
As for how many phones Sony expected to ship, their forecast at the start of the fiscal year was 30 million, vs their revised forecast at the end of Q3 which was at 25 million. Sure, they didn't forecast to sell 25 million at the start of the year, but it's not like they shipped way less than they expected.
