Sony yesterday said it would cut about 10,000 jobs and spend nearly US$1 billion on restructuring costs this fiscal year as the struggling electronics and entertainment giant moves to stem massive losses.
“As Sony Group as a whole, we expect roughly 10,000 job cuts,” it said in a statement yesterday as the firm’s new chief, Kazuo Hirai, held a news briefing to announce his plans to turn around the iconic firm.
The Japanese firm said it would also spend more than ¥75 billion (US$925.7 billion) this year on restructuring costs.
Hirai said that he would target deep losses at Sony’s struggling television unit, which the company said it was aiming to return to profitability by 2014, while posting total sales of ¥8.5 trillion by 2015.
Sony, which has suffered its fourth consecutive year in the red, said it would usher in changes across its divisions, boost its games business and expand further into emerging markets.
“Now is the time for Sony to change,” Hirai told reporters from Sony’s Tokyo headquarters.
“What is urgent is that we strengthen our core businesses while rebuilding our TV business,” he said.
Hirai’s comments came as the maker of PlayStation consoles and Bravia televisions warned earlier this week it would post a record full-year loss of ¥520 billion, more than five times the ¥90 billion loss it predicted in November.
The latest jobs cuts, about 6 percent of Sony’s total work force, come after an earlier restructuring announced in December 2008 amid the global financial crisis that saw the firm slash about 16,000 jobs worldwide.
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],”
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
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