Japan’s Sony Corp yesterday said half-year net profit fell nearly 15 percent, but upgraded its annual forecast on solid growth in its image-sensor and music sectors.
The PlayStation manufacturer said net profit dropped 14.9 percent to ￥340 billion (US$3.12 billion) for the April-to-September period, and tipped annual net profit of ￥540 billion, compared with an earlier ￥500 billion forecast.
The company said it saw sales jump in the image-sensor sector, thanks to a growth in demand due to mobile phones.
“Sales of image sensors remain strong. Demand for image sensors is expected to grow further as high-spec smartphones equipped with multiple lenses are getting more popular,” Hideki Yasuda, an analyst at Ace Research Institute in Tokyo, told reporters before the results were announced.
The Nikkei business daily reported that Sony plans to build a new image-sensor plant in southern Nagasaki Prefecture.
The company operates four image-sensor plants in Japan and is looking to increase production capacity by March 2021.
“We’re considering the plan” to build a new plant in Japan, Sony spokesman Takashi Iida told reporters, but said nothing had been decided yet.
Sales of Sony’s music business also rose, the firm said, helped by its integration of EMI Music Publishing and an increase in streaming revenues.
Sony’s half-year sales dipped 2.1 percent to ￥4.04 trillion, while operating profit jumped 17.3 percent to ￥510 billion.
Sony has spent years struggling to recover from deep financial trouble, a process that entailed aggressive restructuring, the loss of thousands of jobs, and the sale of business units and assets.
It has seen a slowdown in its games and network businesses, and has said it expects revenue from the core sector to sag owing to a continued fall in game hardware sales, and the cost of developing a next-generation console.
In the six-month period, the company posted a drop in sales for the sector, citing a decline in both software and PlayStation 4 hardware sales.
The firm has said its PlayStation 5 console, which is to be equipped with new immersive features, would launch for next year’s holiday season.
SHUTDOWN
Meanwhile, Sony is shutting down its pioneering online-cable alternative, PlayStation Vue, citing the high costs of content and the difficulty of network deals.
The company launched Vue in early 2015 as a skinnier, cheaper version of cable or satellite TV delivered via the Internet. It was a test case for a TV alternative alongside Dish’s Sling TV, and, later, a slew of copycats from DirecTV, Google, Hulu and others.
However, customer growth has slowed and even dropped for many of these services as prices rose and they added more channels, coming closer to their traditional TV counterparts.
The industry’s latest hope for a successor to cable or satellite TV has now shifted to streaming services, including new entries from Walt Disney Co, Comcast Corp and AT&T Inc.
Additional reporting by AP
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