Josh OngHirai revealed at a new conference in Tokyo that the company's annual loss will reach $6.4 billion this year, almost twice that of earlier predictions, as noted by Reuters.
"We have heard a multitude of investor voices calling for change," Hirai said. "Sony will change."
According to the report, the change will come with a restructuring charge of 75 billion yen ($926 million). The company hopes to reduce fixed costs for its TV unit by 60 percent next fiscal year and cut operating costs by 30 percent.
The loss of 10,000 jobs results in a 6 percent reduction in Sony's workforce on top several rounds of layoffs in recent years. Hirai, who took over in February, has promised to take any necessary "painful steps" to improve the company's fortunes.
The company isn't alone in its struggles. Fellow Japanese TV makers Sharp and Panasonic have also fallen upon tough times.
"Japan's consumer electronics industry is facing defeat," Reuters reported Fujio Ando, senior managing director at Chibagin Asset Management, as saying earlier this week.
Rival device maker Apple is now worth more than 30 times as much as Sony in terms of market capitalization. The company's chain of successes have threatened Sony's businesses. For instance, the iPod has replaced Sony's Walkman as the modern music player, while the iPad and MacBook Air have disrupted the company's PC sales. The rise of iOS as a viable gaming platform has hurt Sony's PlayStation profits.
Difficulty in the smartphone industry led Sony to take full control of its joint venture with Ericsson earlier this month. The company paid $1.4 billion to buy out its partner. Even as Apple's iPhone has taken in a growing portion of the mobile phone industry's profits, Sony Ericsson lost €247 million last year.
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38 Comments
Oh dear Sony... maybe you shouldn't have been so arrogant all those years
Sony will hopefully push through here... love their Z series laptops and think they will make a good Ultrabook as long as they price it right and don't get greedy
just checked their website, their laptop range consists of: C,E,F,S,Y and Z series.... too much?
Sony could just concentrate on the PlayStation brand for now.
Follow Apple's way - lots of plans but executed step-by-step. Don't rush.
Or maybe it's time to bring back the person who shook Sony back then.
You were an electronics corporation, then a Music and Motion Picture Catalogue conglomerate, then a Game Console conglomerate, and each time you overreached your original vision suffered and your products cheapened, while prices kept going up.
The crash is inevitable.
Once you get as big as Sony you just start to make crap so people will buy your sh** again. And again.
Same thing will happen to Apple. Just give it time and all them iPhones and mac will b as disposable was those cheap a$$ printers by HP.
[...] For instance, the iPod has replaced Sony's Walkman as the modern music player, [...]
Sony blew it. They kept trying to force weird, proprietary storage formats on the public.
MiniDIsc. Memory Stick. UMD. ATRAC encoding instead of MP3. None of which did anything to
help the Walkman brand. Sony just donated the portable media player market to Apple.
[...] while the iPad and MacBook Air have disrupted the company's PC sales. [...]
Sony never controlled their own destiny in the Wintel PC market. No Wintel PC maker does.
Because they're all at Microsoft's mercy. And they'll all suffer when Windows 8 is released.
Windows 8 is the answer to a question nobody is asking.