“Shares in Sony Corp slumped more than 7 percent to near 32-year lows, as investors doubted the Japanese consumer electronics giant has a strategy to fix its loss-making TV business and compete in the smartphone market against Apple Inc and Samsung Electronics,” Dominic Lau reports for Reuters. “The last time Sony shares were this low, in the summer of 1980, its first Walkman portable cassette player had just gone on sale in the United States. So far this year, Sony has seen more than $3 billion wiped off its market value.”
Lau reports, “‘(In the past) if you wanted a top quality TV you had to buy a Sharp, Panasonic or Sony. Those days are gone,’ Steve Durose, Senior Director and Head of Asia-Pacific at Fitch Ratings, told Reuters last month. ‘I didn’t see anything positive in there (Sony’s results),’ said a trader at a U.S. bank. ‘There’s really nothing in there that can justify buying the stock. You see the loss narrowing in the TV business. That’s fine, but I don’t see any future in the TV business, so it doesn’t matter what they do.'”
Goldman Sachs “said Sony’s forecast of 33 million smartphone shipments in the year to next March looked optimistic given that its supplier, Qualcomm, faced capacity constraints and the firm’s priority is to supply Apple, which could leave Sony without enough smartphone chips to meet its target,” Lau reports.
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Oh, we see a future in the TV business. Just not for Sony.
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