TOKYO— Sony Corp. reported a hefty net loss of ¥136.0 billion ($1.2 billion) for the July-September period as it wrote down the ¥180 billion book value of its struggling smartphone business.
The outcome was narrower the ¥148.06 billion loss forecast by analysts. Markets had factored in a big loss since the electronics maker announced the write-down in September. In the same quarter a year ago, Sony recorded a ¥19.6 billion loss.
Restructuring the troubled Xperia handset business is an urgent task for the Japanese conglomerate. Chief executive Kazuo Hirai named the mobile segment as one of the three pillars of the company’s future, and Sony had ambitions of taking the third-largest global market share after and Samsung and Apple .
But faced with increasing competition from lower-cost Chinese makers, Sony acknowledged that its strategy had been wrong, and it would no longer seek such a large piece of the pie, signaling it would decrease its presence in some emerging markets. In the three-month reporting period, the mobile segment recorded a net loss of ¥172.0 billion.
Apart from the loss-making mobile business, the company’s other two pillars—the PlayStation business and the image sensor business—remain robust. They recorded operating profits of ¥21.8 billion and ¥29.6 billion respectively, from a loss of ¥4.2 billion and a profit of ¥11.9 billion a year ago.
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