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Sony's smartphone losses are canceling out its PS4 wins

Vanillalite

Ask me about the GAF Notebook
The Verge

Sony's rapidly shrinking mobile division has put a damper on the company's latest quarterly earnings, which show great improvement in sales of imaging sensors and PS4 games plus a healthy bump in operating profit. Comparing the last three months of Sony's performance to the previous year, the company's gaming division was up 12.1 percent, pulling in ¥288.6 billion ($2.33bn), while its mobile communications unit slumped by 16.3 percent, recording ¥280.5bn ($2.27bn) in revenue. While evidently still important to Sony's bottom line, the phone business has now been surpassed by sales of PlayStation consoles and games, and may soon fall behind the company's imaging division as well. The Device segment of Sony's earnings, which includes camera sensors, grew by 35.1 percent and produced ¥237.9bn ($1.92bn) in revenue.

The total number would have been greater if it weren't for the mobile division, which lost ¥22.9bn.
 
What Sony latest quarter is one of their best in years. The company as whole made profit and most divisions were profitable.
 

hamchan

Member
Sucks for phones but this is relatively good news for the Playstation division. Shows that there is money to be made in this hobby we love and Sony should focus more on it.
 

Caronte

Member
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Kinthalis

Banned
Is it fair to say 'losses' if the smartphone division is still generating a profit? Or am I reading this wrong?

The Op mentions revenue, but apparently the net result is an operating loss of 188 million.

Revenue - operaiton costs = profit. In this case profit is a negative number, so a loss.
 

LordOfChaos

Member
They make some great phone hardware, and I wish this weren't the case, but they should cut their losses. No one but Apple is making money on mobile, Samsung did for a while thanks to advertising brute force, but even they are slumping.
 
From the article:

More importantly, however, operating income from Sony's seemingly out-of-place insurance business is a robust ¥46 billion, which together with the ¥19.5bn from games and ¥30.3bn from components forms the majority of Sony's overall ¥96.9 billion ($784 million) operating income for the quarter. The total number would have been greater if it weren't for the mobile division, which lost ¥22.9bn.

So yeah, mobile division lost more than the games division made in profit.

The quote in the OP refers to gross revenue, which doesn't account for the costs of earning that revenue (ex. the cost of manufacturing all those phones/consoles, marketing, etc.)
 

muteki

Member
You know might help? If Sony advertised their phones. In America, few people even know Sony makes phones.

Sony's phone marketing here has always been weird. I worked at Sony Ericsson for a while back in the day and they had an odd "no commercials" take on advertising at the time.

At this point with where the Vita is in the market I'd rather they just release a full-featured Android/iOS app with Remote Play/PSN/etc.
 
Amazing phones, terrible marketing. They just don't know how to compete in the mobile market .


And their prices... just look at the M4 Aqua. Amazing phone but I find it to be overpriced.
 
And yet Sony make the best handsets on the market by far.
There's nothing available that can rival the Z line.

Agree !

On the other hand, i read an article recently that said that Sony are staying in the mobile market and that the losses are still due to the Ericsson division purchase. I would definitely go back to the iPhone if the Xperia line is closed. To me, Xperia Z is the best Android smartphone on the market and i don't see myself with an Android phone from another company, i'm talking especially about the Z line of products and the only brand that offers waterproof.
 
And yet Sony make the best handsets on the market by far.
There's nothing available that can rival the Z line.
You mean there isn't any smartphone on the market that can beat a smartphone with overheating SoC, boring and repetitive design, same old camera sensor from Z1 to Z3+? Sony is doing much worse than their competitors imo.
 

Crawl

Member
This isn't surprising. As much as I love Sony hardware they really need to dump their TV and Phone business i.e. discontinue or sell it off. And just make profits off Playstation, music / movies & image sensors.
 

drotahorror

Member
Once you go that deep in loss, isn't it best to just drop it? It looks like a whole they'll never get out of. I thought they were dropping their TV and Phone stuff? Or maybe it was TV and PC's. It sucks that they make some of the best TV's (and apparently phones) but consumers don't bother.
 

gogogow

Member
boggles the mind why Sony would want to chase down the market that is not high end (below Z models)

Sony isn't doing well across their entire lineup. No smartphone manufacturer can compete in the high-end segment agains Apple and Samsung. Sony really should've focused on cheaper, more affordable low and mid-end phones. But Sony can forget about that segment too with the rise of Chinese tech companies, like Xiaomi, Huawei and ZTE. Even Motorola is Chinese now. Tough times are ahead for Sony's smartphone division.
 

Ninja Dom

Member
I think Sony supply Apple with image sensors, right? The iPhone 5S, 6 and 6Plus camera sensors are made by Sony aren't they?
 
Thats a shame, since their Z line is so good. I have the Xperia Z3 with T-Mobile and it's fantastic. I'm sure if they actually advertized them, they would do a lot better since I don't think I've actually ever seen a commercial for any Sony phones.
 
I really hope Sony turns their mobile side around. I love my Z3 tablet and would never get a different android device. I've tried all the samsungs and amazons and asus and they just don't compare.

The problem w Sony is they don't know how to advertise. Every time someone sees my tablet they compliment it and say they never even knew it existed. You can't even buy Sony hardware here in America unless it's at a Sony store which are not as widespread as Walmart or BestBuy.

Their phones are in the same boat. I've never seen a Sony phone at AT&T stores. U just have to know Sony phones exist and get them thru different means. And no one does that.
 

ArtHands

Thinks buying more servers can fix a bad patch
Perhaps sony should stop making handheld hardwares and switch to making games for other handheld hardwares instead
 
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