Sony trims quarterly loss to $115 million
Sony Corp. is still struggling but managed to reduce its red ink for the latest quarter as the Japanese electronics and entertainment company aims for a comeback from record yearly losses.
Sony today reported a 10.7 billion yen (USD 115 million) loss for the October-December quarter compared with a 158 billion yen loss a year earlier.
The company had a record loss of 457 billion yen for the fiscal year through March 2011 as its TV business struggled and it suffered from factory and supplier damage in
northeastern Japan from the 2011 earthquake and tsunami.
Quarterly sales inched up nearly 7 per cent to 1.95 trillion yen (USD 21 billion) despite declining sales of gadgets such as flat-panel TVs and Blu-ray video recorders,
but only because Sony got a perk from a weaker yen.
The yen has been weakening because of expectations the central bank will ease monetary policy and that helped Sony by boosting the value of its overseas sales.
Sony has lost money for the past four years as it fell behind powerful rivals such as Apple Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co. in profitability and innovation.
Kazuo Hirai, who took over as president nine months ago, is promising to lead a comeback with what he calls "wow" products, such as nifty mobile devices, sophisticated digital cameras and interconnected gadgetry designed to show off Sony's technological prowess.
The problem is that rivals are doing the same and sometimes doing it faster and at cheaper prices. Sony is expected to disclose information about the PlayStation 4 video game machine
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