Sharp pain continues with $1.2 billion loss in Q1, drastically lowered forecast for 2012
Having already scraped through a disastrous 2011, Sharp had been banking on making a small but significant profit this year. Those hopes have now evaporated, with the Japanese manufacturer's forecast of 20 billion yen ($250 million) in operating earnings for 2012 being revised down to a 100 billion yen ($1.25 billion) loss. That dose of reality is largely the result of the quarter just gone, in which hardly anyone appears to have bought an Aquos TV (despite the 90-incher being pretty amazing) or a Sharp-made LCD panel, and the company made a 94 billion yen ($1.2 billion) loss in the space of just three months. According to Reuters, as many as 5,000 staff may lose their jobs in the company's first major round of lay-offs.
