For a few quarters now, Sony’s smartphone and TV businesses have been struggling to even break even. But one has to wonder if the smartphone business is struggling because they announce two flagships a year? Or perhaps it’s from not really being available in the US, one of the world’s biggest smartphone markets. It’s probably a bit of both. But as for TVs, that’s probably because a lot of people are cord cutters these days, and getting rid of their TV. I know I haven’t bought one in about 4 years now. Their Q1 operating profit did rise to about 69.8 billion yen ($680 million) from 35.5 billion yen a year earlier. Which easily beat the 16.6 billion yen that analysts had predicted. So what’s keeping Sony afloat? Well their games, and movie businesses. 22 Jump Street has done pretty well for Sony in the last quarter, and we may even see another sequel to that pretty soon.
With these results, Sony also changed their forecast of smartphone sales for the year. Forecasting 43 million handsets being sold, down from the 50 million it originally forecasted. TV Sales was changed to 15.5 million from 16 million. Sony also stated that they only plan to break even with their smartphone business, after previously forecasting a 26 million yen operating profit for that business.
So things aren’t particularly great for Sony right now, but they are hanging in there. Although they are expecting to eat around $487 million in losses throughout the Fiscal year 2014, so we’ll see how that pans out. Hopefully their smartphone and TV businesses pick up some steam so that they don’t lose that much money this year. Of course, if they god their smartphones and tablets into the US sooner and on more carriers, I bet they’d do much better than break even with their smartphones. Although that’s easier said than done. How many of you are still rooting for Sony in the smartphone world? Let us know in the comments down below.