Sony Records Small Loss In Q2, PS3 Sales Up

If you keep a weather eye on the fortunes of technology companies you will be well aware of a number of global and regional situations that are adversely impacting their performance. The recovery in the global economy, particularly in The West, is still progressing like a drunk trying to find his way home after closing time.

Last month’s floods in Thailand have hit many tech companies hard (e.g., Western Digital’s flooded HDD factory) either because they have manufacturing facilities there or some of their key suppliers do and Japanese companies are still struggling with the effects of a strong Yen.

All of those are impacting Sony which is also making its own internal changes to try and address poor performance.  We already know that they are buying Ericsson out of their mobile phone joint-venture. Then a few days ago stories started circulating that they may pull out of their LCD joint-venture with Samsung prompting the usual “no comment” statement from Sony.

[drop2]Now their Q2 FY2011 financial report, covering the period from 1 July 2011 to 30 September 2011, reveals that they are anticipating “the sale of the small- and medium-sized display business” and is accompanied by a more detailed statement on the steps they are taking in an effort to return their LCD TV business to profitability, realigning it “from volume expansion to establishing a stable platform for revenue growth”.

The stimulus for all of this is another quarter of poor financial performance which has seen Sony record an operating loss of Â¥1.6 billion ($21 million, £13.4 million).  This is on the back of sales falling by 9.1% compared to the same quarter last year (year-on-year) a fall which Sony attributes primarily to the “unfavourable foreign exchange rates and lower LCD television sales”.

In Sony’s corporate structure both LCD TVs and its PlayStation brand are part of its Consumer Products & Services business segment. The CPS segment alone recorded a loss of Â¥34.6bn ($449m, £291m). That Sony’s overall performance was much better was down to relatively strong performances from both its Pictures and Music businesses.

Of course what we are really interested in is how many PlayStations were sold during those three months.  The answers are 3.7m PlayStation 3s (up 200k year-on-year) 1.7m PSPs (also up 200k) and 1.2m PlayStation 2s (down 300k).  Software wise Sony sold 37.4m PS3 titles during the period (up 2.1m) 8.1m PSP titles (down 2.9m) and 2.6m PS2 titles (down 1.8m).

Source: Sony

Note: All figures provided by Sony except for Pound Sterling values which use the average JPY/GBP exchange rate for July 1 2011 to Sept 30 2011, which is 0.0084, provided by OANDA.

11 Comments

  1. Wow ps3 is almost just 2million behind xbox360 now!!

    • Yep, catching up quick.

    • It[the ps3]has probably overtaken the xbox360 in worldwide sales by now but no way will the internet gaming sites admit it & they never will.

      • The difference (based on the financials from both companies) is 2.1 million in favour of the Xbox 360 worldwide. PS3 will likely catch up soon.

      • If/when Sony does catch we’ll freely admit it. Why wouldn’t we?

      • @JBoo TSA isn’t just another Internet gaming site. Stick around a while and you’ll find that out yourself.

  2. Sony’s consoles were always strong in the second half of their life cycles and it’s difficult to see the trend reversing with the PS3. The amount and quality of PS3 exclusives for the past year or more has been phenomenal in comparison to the competition. Next year’s a big one!

  3. lol “by Greek standards’ :D

  4. It does make me wonder how many people have bought a second PS3 due to failure compared to the amount that have bought a replacement Xbox 360 for the same reason. I think they are dead even if not more PS3s sold over Xbox 360 if you take replacement purchases out of the world sale figures. There is no way to work that out though because not every broken console will be reported to the manufacturer. Would be interesting to see those figures if it was possible though.

    • It would be, although Sony and MS would never publish the failure rates, unless they were quite literally 0% (which is pretty much impossible).

    • I would love to see the figures on actual live and active LIVE and PSN accounts for this reason. A few of my friends have bought numerous 360’s because of them blowing up but only have 1 account.

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