Sony just posted its quarterly earnings report, and its mobile division is not doing well at all.
Year-over-year, Sony Mobile lost over $480 million.
Meanwhile, Sony’s gaming division is almost making up for mobile’s loss, earning $317 million more YOY.
Sony just posted its quarterly earnings report, summarizing the company’s gains and losses for the second fiscal quarter of 2018. The report paints a bright picture for its gaming division, which of course includes all things PlayStation. Sony Gaming had a year-over-year increase of about $317 million.
However, the report paints a bleak picture indeed for its struggling mobile division.
In fiscal Q2 2018, Sony’s mobile division lost over $480 million as compared to fiscal Q2 of the previous year. While that’s an alarmingly-high number, the division running at a loss is not that surprising: the previous quarter saw the company losing almost $100 million in the same division.
To make matters worse, Sony as a whole is actually doing fairly well: the Japanese company made over $1 billion more in the first half of fiscal 2018 than it did in the first half of fiscal 2017.
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In other words, Sony’s mobile division is acting a bit like dead weight.
While Sony Mobile isn’t likely to be shut down any time soon, the company can only sustain supporting the division at losses like this for so long before it will have to make some hard decisions. After all, even though making over $1 billion more in a quarter as compared to the prior year is good news, it’s not nearly as good when you find out half of it will go to keep a struggling division afloat.
What exactly is Sony doing wrong? Our own Jimmy Westenberg has some theories, but it ultimately comes down to one thing: most general consumers don’t even know Sony makes smartphones. That’s absolutely the company’s biggest issue when it comes to mobile.
You can click here to read the full earnings report.
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jasonj2232 on November 3rd, 2018 at 12:51 UTC »
Sony peaked with the Xperia Z3. Then onwards they simply haven't been able to keep up with the competition.
Also Sony most definitely have the worst marketing department ever. They make some of the best in class products (1000x NC headphones, Mirrorless cameras, Bravia TVs etc) but I have never seen an advertisement for any of these products. They were ahead of the curve with so many things like waterproof phones but people only started caring about waterproof phones when Samsung and/or Apple included the feature.
It's just fucking stupid that they can't make good phones or market them considering they have all the necessary resources at their disposal.
Edit: Also, wtf happened to the Z series tablets? The Z3 tablet was simply the best tablet at one point and then the product line fizzled out. They should fire the idiot who manages their mobile division.
Edit 2: If you want to see how abysmal Sony's marketing is, just go to YouTube and search for reviews of a Sony phone, the only ones you'll find will be that of the Z5, mostly because of its 4k screen, and that Z1 or prior smartphones.
Edit 3: Continuing my rant here, I'm admittedly a bit of a Sony fanboy and I'm quite invested in Sony products. I have a ps4, a Bravia TV, Sony Blu-ray player, an a6000 mirrorless camera, Sony headphones and I use Sony apps but I wont buy an Xperia because if I'm paying top price for a phone, I want it to be the best (and have a headphone jack), and currently Sony doesn't have the best or even 2nd or 3rd best mobile in any price category.
raspvidy on November 3rd, 2018 at 11:35 UTC »
Man the Z2 and Z3 were amazing. What ever happened?
Lepang8 on November 3rd, 2018 at 10:13 UTC »
I still think the only factor why Sony loses here is that their marketing campaign sucks. Other things we list here to think to be the cause of the fall is just regular r/Android echochambling. But it doesn't change the situation.