Sony CEO gives smartphone business until 2017 to become profitable

Sony CEO Kazuo Hirai gives the group’s smartphone branch one more year after the current fiscal year to become profitable. If this does not work, “the options will be considered”, according to Hirai. He does not say which options he is considering.

If the industry does make a profit in the fiscal year starting in 2016, Sony will at least continue to operate in that market, Sony CEO Kazuo Hirai said, according to Reuters. That wording seems to indicate that one of the options is to quit the Xperia branch. Sony previously divested its Vaio branch for PCs and on Tuesday the group announced that the business unit for semiconductors such as image sensors will stand on its own two feet.

Although Sony recorded an increase in profits in the past quarter, the deliveries of mobile phones fell sharply, from 9.4 million to 7.2 million smartphones. Sales also fell by 16.3 percent. This decline is partly the result of Sony’s strategy to focus not on scale, but on improving profits.

Sony bought out partner company Ericsson in 2011, with which it had made phones under the Sony Ericsson name for a decade. Sony has stopped making ‘normal’ mobile phones and now focuses only on its Xperia smartphones.