“Sony Corp Chief Executive Offer Kazuo Hirai is seeking to cure a TV business that has lost $7.8 billion over a decade by isolating it to speed up decisions on future strategy,” Sophie Knight and Reiji Murai report for Reuters. “Hirai is spinning off TV operations into a separate business in the latest attempt to fix a division that he says for now remains central to the Japanese electronics maker. It’s part of a broader restructuring: Sony also confirmed on Thursday it will sell its Vaio personal computer division, effectively ending 17 years in that business.”
“Sony said charges associated with the moves will combine with weaker showings than it expected in mobile phones, TVs and PCs to pitch it into a net loss this fiscal year of 110 billion yen ($1.1 billion). The maker of Bravia TVs and Playstation game consoles will cut 5,000 jobs – just over 3 percent of its global staff – as a result of the shakeup, counting on saving 100 billion yen in annual fixed costs,” Knight and Murai report. “Two years into the job, Hirai’s gambit comes as Japan’s electronics firms struggle to compete with deep-pocketed industry giants like Apple Inc… the Vaio sale marks the first time Hirai has pulled a major consumer product line.”
“The domestic Vaio PC division will be sold to investment fund Japan Industrial Partners, which will set up a separate company to take over the operations. Financial terms of the sale weren’t disclosed, but Sony will initially hold a 5 percent stake in that company,” Knight and Murai report. “The TV operations will be spun off into a separate unit by July 2014, Sony said. The job cuts – mostly outside Japan – are to be implemented by March 2015.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Steve Jobs’ Post-PC era is right on schedule.
Sony finally figures out that it’s tough to make money when you’re stuck with an inferior OS and the market you’re targeting, premium PCs, is dominated by Apple’s Macintosh 9-1.
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Steve Jobs offered to let Sony VAIO PCs run Mac OS X, but Sony blew it – February 5, 2014
Apple Mac owns 90% market share for ‘premium’ PCs costing over $1,000 – February 1, 2010
