Sony didn't make any money from consumer electronics

David Heath
Saturday, 12 November 2011 12:55

IT Industry - Listed Tech

According to the latest quarterly results, despite achieving the greatest income, Sony's consumer electronics division lost a significant amount of money.

take a look at Sony's latest Consolidated Financial Results for the quarter ended September 30th (sorry, it's a long slow tedious read for most of us!).

The first page tells us the main story.  On operating revenue of $US20,454M, the company made a loss of $US350M.

However, there's more to it than that.  The later pages show us the figures for the major divisions, and here's where it gets interesting.  The following table lays out the data.  All figures are in millions of US dollars.

 

This shows that the two divisions focussed on electronic devices (either as products - Consumer products division or components - Professional, device & solutions) both earned the greatest amount of income and lost the most money.

Conversely, Pictures and Music made an acceptable profit and the stellar performer was Sony's Financial Services division (banking, life insurance and general insurance) which returned a 13% profit.

Sony blamed the poor results (which were a drop on the same quarter in the previous year) as, "Consolidated sales declined year-on-year primarily due to unfavorable foreign exchange rates and lower LCD television sales."

Moving forward, Sony also expects the Yen to appreciate, affecting the revenue of overseas sales and for the effects of the Thai floods to have a material impact.

The poor result in the Consumer Electronics division was blamed on a decrease in LCD TV sales, poor exchange rates affecting PC revenue, a decline in sales in the game business and a strategic price reduction for the PlayStation®3 console.