Sony believes mobile business is costing it billions

17 Sep 2014

The Sony Xperia Z2

Japanese tech giant Sony has revised its annual earnings forecast after its estimated losses for the year is now believed to be four times bigger because of increased mobile phone competition.

Sony now expects to post losses of 230bn yen (€1.65bn), up from its previous estimate of 50bn yen (€410m), which the company attributes to the investments it made in the smartphone market, according to the BBC.

Sony’s range of phones, including its most recent flagship model, the Xperia Z2, have struggled to fight the success of other major smartphone brands, including Apple, Samsung and HTC.

Sony’s original business strategy was a daring decision which effectively sold the handsets as near to cost as possible to gain a greater marketshare from its competitors, which unfortunately for the company, has not panned out.

In the face of increasing losses over the last number of years, Sony began selling off various divisions of the company, including its PC division, and even selling off the premises of two of its headquarters, one in New York and its original headquarters in Tokyo, known as ‘Sony City Osaki’.

On top of this, Sony was forced to cut 5,000 jobs across its flagging divisions, such as its PC business, as well as the TV development portion of the business.

Colm Gorey was a senior journalist with Silicon Republic

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