Sony Corp said yesterday it would post a US$3.2 billion net loss for the year that ended on March 31, the latest setback for the Japanese consumer electronics giant.
The maker of the PlayStation video games, Vaio computers and Trinitron TVs has been battling to recover from the March 11 earthquake, and more recently, a series of computing hacking attacks. It is due to announce its full-year earnings on Thursday.
Sony said it now expected a net loss of ¥260 billion (US$3.2 billion) versus a previous forecast for a profit of ¥70 billion, thanks to a “non-cash charge” of around ¥360 billion related to Japanese tax credits.
It stuck with its earlier forecast, issued before the March 11 earthquake, for an annual operating profit of ¥200 billion.
In its first estimate for the year to March next year, Sony said its operating profit would also be about ¥200 billion.
The quake and tsunami damaged Sony plants in northeastern Japan, snarled the supply chain and triggered a plunge in domestic consumption. Sony estimated the impact of the quake in the current year at ¥150 billion at the operating level.
Regarding the hacking attacks that forced it to shutdown its PlayStation Network, Sony said “known costs” were estimated at ¥14 billion. Sony is targeting the end of this month for fully restoring the affected networks.
Many rival firms, including Panasonic Corp, have yet to issue forecasts for the current financial year to next March, due to uncertainty following the disaster.
An analysts’ consensus, according to a SmartEstimates by Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S, is for a 2010-2011 operating profit of ¥197 billion. SmartEstimates place more weight on recent estimates by highly rated analysts.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy