Sony axes 10,000 workers, eyes up mobile and medical biz
Cash-squandering giant in global spring clean
Posted in Management, 12th April 2012 10:44 GMT
Watch Now : Virtual Machine Movement with Hyper-V
Sony Corp confirmed today that it will lay off 10,000 workers worldwide in a move to turn around its TV biz, strengthen its core digital imaging, gaming and mobile divisions, and chase sales in emerging markets.
The consumer electronics giant's newly installed CEO Kazuo Hirai hoped that his strategy would allow loss-making Sony to return to profitability. The company said in a statement on its website:
As Sony moves to strengthen its core businesses and shift resources to growth areas, it will also restructure its headquarters, subsidiaries and sales company organisations in order to further enhance operational efficiencies.
As a result of these measures, Sony estimates that the headcount across the entire Sony Group will be reduced by approximately 10,000 in FY12. This includes employees expected to transfer outside the Sony Group as part of the sale of businesses and other realignments resulting from business portfolio optimisation.
Sony anticipates that many of these businesses will have future growth opportunities outside the Sony Group, and Sony will consider various measures to secure continuity of employment for employees at their new destinations. Sony is projecting restructuring costs of 75 billion yen in FY12.
Hirai replaced Howard Stringer at the start of this month, at which point he doubled the Japanese company's annual loss forecast to $6.4bn. Sony hopes to slurp 70 per cent of total sales and 85 per cent of operating income from its digital imaging, gaming and mobile wings by 2014. But Hirai can't deny that the task ahead of him is daunting.
On mobile, the company plans to integrate R&D, design engineering, sales and marketing operations of its smartphone biz, Sony Tablet and VAIO offshoots to get products to market faster, it said. Part of that strategy, which it hopes will lead to mobile sales of 1.8 trillion yen (£13.9bn, $22.2bn) by 2014, will include launching new mobile products, Sony added.
Its TV business remains in the red, however, but Sony is hoping to return that to profitability by its 2014 fiscal year. It described itself as a "new entrant to the medical industry", where it is punting peripherals such as printers, monitors, cameras and recorders. Sony hopes to bring in sales of 50bn yen (£387m, $616m) in that market over the next two years.
Additionally, the company will move into the medical equipment components sector and the life science industry. ®
Watch Now : Virtual Machine Movement with Hyper-V
COMMENTS
Huge list of things they are doing to turn around profits, didn't read a single thing about customer relations, perhaps someone should send the MD this link:
http://www.customerservicescoreboard.com/Sony
to give 'em some ideas.
Hint: They're not doing so well - their success rate is 28.82 out of a 100, 334 negative comments vs 14 positive
TVs
They used to be the biggest name in TVs, I have had theirs since the early 80s.
Their mid and upper range TVs still sell to the knowleagable, but competing on cheap TVs no hope.
I know a few people with Samsung - TVs are fine, similar prices to Sony as well.
Re: TV market is brutal not the place to start a recovery
Can you define "overcharge"?
You say "they still overcharge" but they are making a loss. They can't cut prices without losing money on every TV and no they can't make it up with volume.
I would be interested if you could point to an overpriced product and by what criteria because I think that they are pretty competitive (although admittedly not the cheapest). Dixons is selling a 32" LED 1080P 3D capable Freeview HD Sony TV with Internet services for £379 which sounds competitive to me (although without the glasses I expect). It is £10 less than a similar Samsung without 3D (3D is £100 more). I believe both these products are near end of life but each year's product improvement is dropping.
http://www.dixons.co.uk/gbuk/sony-bravia-kdl-32ex723-full-hd-32-led-3d-tv-09759058-pdt.html
I'm not saying that all the prices are as good as some competitors but that certainly isn't due to excessive mark up. It might be that they aren't as efficient as some and which may be a mix of higher quality in some ways and inefficiency or high component cost.
I think one part may the distance grown between the increasingly outsourced production and the design and development side. Also the lack of in house panel development may also be a factor as competitors can design both together to make it a little more efficient to make.
What goes around, comes around....
This time, it might be Sony... So whose next.. Samsung, Apple, Facebook, Google
When they are at the top, the only other place to go is down...
Enabling efficient data center monitoring
The new Office Garage series:
IT infrastructure monitoring strategies
