Sony Q2 Results Drop 25%

Officials from Sony Corp. have released details of the company’s second quarter results, in which profits have dropped by 25%. The company has seen strong sales of digital cameras and mobile phones offset by research costs in its video games division and losses from its movie business. For the July-September 2003 period earnings fell from 44 billion yen ($401m) to 32.9 billion yen ($300m), from the same quarter last year. However, sales increased by 0.4% to 1.8 trillion yen ($16b) – the first increase in three quarters. The company’s games division saw rising research and development costs, for both the PlayStation 3 and the portable PSP, force operating income down by 91% to 2.2 billion ($20m). Falling US sales of the PlayStation 2 and a decline in software sales across the world saw the division’s sales drop by 35.6% to 161 billion yen ($1.5 billion). In spite of these falls the company shipped 8.78 million PlayStation 2 units world-wide during the quarter, a rise of 490,000 on the same period last year. Software shipments totaled 44 million, up 2 million. The company, which announced world-wide redundancies of over 20,000 staff earlier this week, is set to announce a turnaround strategy next Tuesday, which is rumored to involve an alliance with South Korean Samsung Electronics.