Sony to Lose $3.2 Billion This Year, Due to Earthquakes and PSN Security Breach

As with all similar situations, with time passing, companies and investors can get a much better handle on the extend of damage dealt. This can be in both physical and financial impact and Sony has experienced both in a very short period. With massive earthquakes that rocked Japan during the month of March, Sony was forced to shut down factories, repair buildings and delay many products into the later part of this year. With extensive repair costs and missed product launches, this will cause Sony to report a $3.2 billion loss for the year. Sony was originally on a path for a ¥70 billion ($855 million) profit. The same holds true for Sony’s PlayStation division. Originally the division was going ahead at full steam with an announced profit predicted. Now, thanks to the month long PSN breach, the company has estimated a ¥14 billion (about $172 million) loss for that division. Of course, this is just the actual loss for the store being down and the costs that it took to create a more secure server. With lawsuits that always tend to follow, you can expect that number to rise. It’s expected that many other Japanese companies like Panasonic will also be reporting a loss for the year.

[Via Reuters]
[Source Sony]

Sony Ericsson Ships 9 million Xperia Android Phones

With Sony Ericssons Q4 results in, it turned out to be a case of good news bad news for the struggling partnership that has been having high hopes on their new phones. In the last year, Sony Ericsson has been looking to turn their fortunes around, especially with the rise of popular devices like the iPhone and Android has been their savior like almost all other phone makers. During this time, Sony has released the Xperia X10, X10 Mini, X10 Mini Pro which have now surpassed 9 million shipped. This is the good news for Sony and this achievement is that much more impressive when you consider that the Xperia X10 is the only one of the series that was released in the US and it was a product that was never advertised. Other sites have noted that this is equally impressive because most of this fleet was running around during 2010 with the outdated Android 1.6 and only recently saw an upgrade path to 2.1. Still the bad news is that this comes as profits dip with the company reporting a moderate €35 million pre-tax profit for Q4. Though this is below what the company had hoped for and lower then previous quarters, this is still a large turnaround for a division that was losing money left and right just a little over a year ago.

Sony Still Losing 10% On Each Playstation 3

Sony CFO Nobuyuki Oneda noted during Sony’s earning report that even though with huge surge of the PS3 over the last 2 years, Sony is still losing 10% on every PS3 sold, meaning roughly $40. So even with price cuts and cutting down of internal parts (like the PS2 emotion engine,two USB ports from four and no more card reader), Sony is indeed losing money and this makes us think, if the rumored PS3 price cut comes true during E3, will Sony continue to lose more? Or will the new PS3 model with a smaller Cell processor (the eventual 45mm) and blu-ray player with lower costs help Sony offset their losses on each unit and actually make money, if these cost cutting methods can be made.