An employee adjusts Sony Corp’s Bravia television monitors at an electronics store in Tokyo yesterday.
TOKYO: Even James Bond and Spider-Man can’t rescue Sony, the beleaguered Japanese electronics maker.
In “Skyfall,” actor Daniel Craig’s 007 uses Sony’s Xperia T smartphone, while Andrew Garfield’s title character in “The Amazing Spider-Man” wields an Xperia X10 Mini Pro. The two movies, released by Sony this year, have grossed more than $1.7bn combined, compared with the company’s $10bn in total losses during the past four fiscal years.
Such blockbuster promotion notwithstanding, Sony says sales of its Bravia TVs, Cyber-shot cameras, PlayStation game consoles and Handycam video recorders may drop this fiscal year. Hammered by declining TV demand, Sony, Panasonic and Sharp fell to 30-year lows in Tokyo trading this year after record fiscal-year losses totaling 1.6 trillion yen ($19bn).
Once symbols of Japan’s global dominance in consumer electronics, Sony, Panasonic and Sharp were among the nation’s worst-performing companies in 2012. Overtaken in market share by overseas rivals including South Korea’s Samsung Electronics, the trio lost $15bn in combined market capitalisation this year amid declining sales and a strong yen.
A comeback in 2013 may depend on whether the Japanese companies can take strong measures including shedding some businesses, said Kota Ezawa, an analyst at Citigroup in Tokyo.
Sony, Sharp and Panasonic are eliminating more than 29,000 jobs, closing plants and selling assets to restore profit after failing to come up with hit products to challenge Apple and Samsung’s mobile devices. “Sony and Panasonic still have the chance to keep their pride,” Ezawa said.
Sony, which invented the Walkman music player in 1979 and introduced the first CD player, has posted four straight full- year net losses. The Tokyo-based company is headed for a ninth year of losses from TVs after losing market share to Samsung, the world’s largest maker of TVs and smartphones.
Sony, targeting a 20bn-yen profit this fiscal year, fell to a 32-year low of 789 yen in Tokyo trading on December 5 and has dropped 32 percent this year, the sixth-worst performer in Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 Stock Average, which has gained 20 percent.
Shares of Panasonic, which posted a 772bn-yen net loss last fiscal year, have dropped 23 percent. The company is projecting a 765bn yen loss in the year ending March 31.
Sharp, which posted a 376bn yen net loss last fiscal year, said in November that this year’s loss may widen to 450bn yen and added there was “material doubt” about the company’s ability to survive.
At Sony, Chief Executive Officer Kazuo Hirai is counting on boosting sales of Xperia phones and turning around the TV-making unit. In April, he identified mobile devices as a key priority.
After spending $1.3bn to buy out its mobile-phone venture with Ericsson AB, Sony plans to boost smartphone sales 51 percent to 34 million units in the year ending March 31. Sony, which sold 8.8 million smartphones in the quarter ended September 30, is speeding up development of new models and working to integrate its technology from other areas into the mobile-phone business, said Yu Tominaga, a spokesman.
This year, the company introduced more than 20 new smartphone models, Tominaga said.
Xperia phones were outsold more than 6-1 by Samsung’s smartphones in the quarter ended September 30. Samsung, the Suwon, South Korea-based maker of Galaxy phones and tablets, led smartphone shipments in the period with 56.9 million, Boston- based Strategy Analytics said in October. Apple was second with 26.9 million.
Sony is eliminating about 15 percent of the unit’s workforce and moving its headquarters to Tokyo from Lund, Sweden.
Sony’s TVs, PCs, compact cameras and game consoles may decline as they are increasingly replaced by smartphones and tablet computers, Christian Dinwoodie, an analyst at CLSA Asia- Pacific Markets, said in a December 10 report, cutting the rating on the stock to underperform from buy.
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