Companies are announcing their Q3 results and as expected Sony is the latest to join them. Though yet to fully disclose them, the preliminaries are in and are as mixed as ever. With a background of five of the nine Sony divisions posting operating losses in Q2, Q3 was expected to be a little different. That, apparently, is not the case. Some of the company’s strengths like the PlayStation gaming console will have to wait for the current quarter’s results to know if they are on an upward trajectory once again since sales took a dive in Q3. Television sells though significant, were equally not stronger. The mobile division managed to up its revenues though still lagging behind the likes of Samsung’s mobile division and other big rivals like Apple and LG.
According to the company, it registered a net loss of 19.3 billion yen in the three month period ending September 30th which is a significant increase over the 15.5 billion yen loss recorded in the same period last year.
The PlayStation is one of Sony’s most stand-out products in the market but it has had a struggling quarter. Sony’s gaming division which makes the popular game console Sony’s gaming arm, which makes the PlayStation consoles, posted an operating loss of $8.1 million which is a stark contrast to the $234 million operating profit recorded during the same period last year. This is expected to change when this quarter’s results are in since the PlayStation 4 is going on sale in major markets in the next few days and is expected to be a hit with Sony projecting high sales. Despite the operating loss, the gaming division’s revenues were up by 5.1%.
Sony’s mobile division saw its revenues rise by 39.3% to stand at $4.3 billion. The Home Entertainment division saw its revenues rise by 11.8% despite sales of TVs not shooting up as expected. It should be noted that Display Search places Sony as the third largest television maker and the company expects to sell 14 million LCD TVs.
Generally for Sony, it is the Devices division (recording media, batteries etc) and the motion pictures division (Sony Pictures) that dragged its Q3 performance otherwise all else indicates that the company is still on track and can bounce back to all the magical figures every executive and shareholder dreams of. It expects its mobile division to be further boosted by sales of its most recent flagship device, the Xperia Z1 while the gaming division is banking on PlayStation 4. We can note that Sony was nowhere to be seen in the top five smartphone makers so it is high time it gets its act together and that shouldn’t be hard since its Xperia line-up has managed to hold up well for the better part of the year.
