Sony’s been having a bit of a hard time as a whole lately. Many of its divisions have posted less profit than ever and some divisions have even posted significant losses. Sony CEO Kaz Hirai has been hard at work restructuring the company and attempting to bring it back to profits. Part of this restructuring includes massive cuts in divisions that have been unprofitable lately, as well as specific targeted expansion in areas that have been doing well for the Japanese electronics giant. One area where Sony is essentially the unchallenged leader in both quality and sales is smartphone sensors, where some of the newest sensors can do crazy things like record 4K video at 240FPS.
This is where Sony is going to make the future profitable again, and the changes that have been made just in the past few weeks are already helping the company. Sony posted estimates for its third quarter operating profit recently, which were actually a bit lower than the final earnings statements are showing. Today Sony is announcing that it has achieved an operating profit of 182 billion Yes (about $1.5 billion USD), which is a 2.2 percent increase from the estimates provided previously. These numbers differed because Sony had not yet put together fully accurate data for its movie division because of the massive hack that was experienced last year.
Sony’s financial year 2014 ends on March 31 and so far the forecasts haven’t changed, even though the third quarter ended up being more profitable. On another high note for Sony, its stocks have risen more than 30 percent just this year thanks to hopes that the company can make a quick turnaround. With numbers like these there’s every reason to believe that’s possible. Many have surmised that Sony may step out of the smartphone race altogether if the upcoming Xperia Z4 smartphone isn’t a runaway success, and given how few units were actually sold compared to many other large manufacturers this is indeed possible. Sony doesn’t appear to be giving up yet though, as the Android 5.0 Lollipop update begins its rollout for many Xperia Z series devices and the upcoming Xperia Z4 phone looks like the biggest refresh the series has had since its origin.