With sales and revenue down over 17% compared to the previous quarter, Sony have posted a net loss for the three months to December 31st 2011 of ¥159 billion ($2bn, £1.3bn) in their Q3 FY11 financial statement. They describe the key reasons for the fall in sales as being the impact of the floods in Thailand, lower spending in developed countries and the comparative strength of the Yen.
The year-on-year fall in Sony’s sales was greatest here in Europe where they saw a decline of almost 26%. Things were a little better for Sony in America where sales fell just over 21%. Even in Sony’s homeland of Japan their sales fell by around 15%. Further falls were recorded in China and other areas of the Asia-Pacific region.
By far the biggest loss making of Sony’s divisions was their Consumer Products and Services (CPS) division, where all your favourite Sony gadgets are made. Its global sales fell over 24% leading to the division recording a loss of ¥85.7bn ($1.1bn, £0.7bn). Primarily the fall is attributed to falling sales of LCD TVs in Japan, Europe and the U.S., a situation which is further exacerbated by unfavourable currency exchange rates.
Perhaps the most troubling figures from the statement are the revisions Sony have made to their forecasts for the full year. They had been predicting a loss of ¥90bn as recently as November but are now predicting that their results for the year will show a loss of ¥220bn. More importantly for those of us here at TSA they have trimmed their forecast for PlayStation 3 sales by a million to 14 million sales for the financial year, which if it holds true will be a fall of 300,000 from Sony’s FY10.
PS3 sales in the last three months were a little higher than a year ago at 6.5 million versus 6.3 then. The PS2 saw a substantial fall from 2.1m last year to just 900,000 this year. Its fall of 1.2m was matched by the PSP whose sales dropped from 3.6m to 2.4m. The statement makes no mention of the recently released PS Vita.
Source: Sony
Jakster123x
In the words of Nathan Drake:
“Holeee shit”
cam the man
There won’t be many companies making ‘luxury goods’ doing well at the moment.
Kaminari
The “unexpected marketing expenses” were due to the huge amount of money Sony had to pour into the damage control of the PSN fiasco. I don’t think that will happen twice though, as that would signify their death warrant.
Awayze
How to make a profit on the Bravia section?
Go back to PLASMA, look at Panasonic Viera TV’s, higher response time, amazing colours and deepest blacks of any TV, not only is it cheaper than LED but its better. Not to mention Sony TV’s are more expensive than Panasonic’s when there’s no need for them to be.
AG2297
I’m sorry but I completely disagree. A proper backlit LED TV is far superior to Plasma in almost every way and Plasma is 100% not the way to go especially due to the energy consumption of it which will only become more and more of an issue environmentally.