Finally, after closing 18% of its manufacturing facilities and cutting 20,000 heads across its global organization, Sony just posted a profit for the quarter. We're talking an operating profit of ¥146 billion ($1.5 billion) for the quarter on ¥2.2 trillion in sales. Sony's net profitability came in at ¥79.2 billion after three straight quarters of
losses, handily beating The Street's mean estimate of ¥33.73 billion sending stock up some 4% at the time of this post. Unfortunately for us gadget nerds, Sony's return to prosperity is largely due to a doubling of sales at Sony's financial unit and a 16% rise in its movie business -- sales from its consumer products and devices division were off 11% thanks to flat-panel TV price competition and component costs. VAIO PC sales were up a slight 2% worldwide while sales of its venerable PS2 (2.1 million units vs. 2.5 million a year earlier) and PSP (4.2 million vs 5.1 million a year earlier) were both off for the quarter. At least the price cuts on the PS3 helped push sales up to 6.5 million from 4.5 million. Still, profit is profit and profit must grow regardless of crummy consumer sales, you know.
posted February 4th 2010 5:53AM
Is that Tom Hanks on the right?
@kingoffools
haha thats exactly what I was thinking
@kingoffools
My thoughts exactly as well!
@kingoffools It IS Tom Hanks! Sony always rolls out the celebs for its keynotes:
http://www.engadget.com/2009/01/08/live-from-howard-stringers-ces-keynote/
Sony needs to work on balancing its pricing with its hardware offerings for consumer products. The days of paying a premium just because "Its A Sony!" are over. We don't want to pay $500 for a low spec netbook with 3 hour battery life.
"Sony's profits is like a box of chocolates:you never know what you're gonna get."
I call it the 'fake profit'.
By cutting employees and manufacturing capacity, it's the Chainsaw Dunlap method of improving the bottom line, which doesn't always work in the slightly longer purview of a few quarters.
It blows my mind to see that PS3 is done by 1 million behind 360.
@Vman
oops. down*
Selling 6.5 million PS3s in 3 months is impressive. At that rate, they will sell 26 million units for the year. But then again, more of these devices usually sell at the end of year, so let us hope the sales will continue at this high level. But I am sure it will pickup considerably with the release of the PS3 Motion Controller in the October to December quarter.