SONY SIDE DOWN
The company repeated its September forecast for a full-year profit of $81 million, about half of the previous year's total, on a 3% rise in revenue to $61 billion.
The company's music business sales rose 4.7% to $1.17 billion, which were also boosted by a weakening yen, while the game business saw sales double to $2 billion from the year before based on strong sales of PlayStation 2 machines in the U.S. and Europe. Worldwide shipments of the console numbered 4.62 million for the quarter, for a total of 19.6 million machines shipped so far. The movie sector rose about 29% to $1.23 billion.
The company's electronics business performed poorly, though, hurt by lower demand and severe price competition, with an operating loss of $209 million on steady sales at $10.8 billion. Sales of personal computers and TVs lagged in Japan, while displays and video camera sales were down in the U.S. and Europe.
In the first half of the fiscal year, Sony lost $363 million compared with a loss of $618.7 million during the same period last year. Revenues rose to $28.8 billion from $27.5 billion for the first six months of the last fiscal year.
The company said it planned to eliminate an additional 4,600 jobs by the end of this fiscal year, bringing to 21,000 the number of jobs being cut, or 11% of its global work force. They're also offering a deal on Trinitrons "that fell off the truck."
