Sony sees its anemic smartphone business as ‘indispensable’

“Sony Corp sees the smartphone business as indispensable to its brand portfolio, its CEO said, bucking calls from some investors that the Japanese electronics firm should scrap the money-losing business,” Makiko Yamazaki reports for Reuters.
“The smartphone business reported an operating loss of 97.1 billion yen ($879.45 million) in the year ended March, lagging rivals such as Apple and Samsung Electronics and weighing on the group’s record-breaking profit,” Yamazaki reports. “[CEO] Kenichiro Yoshida told a group of journalists on Wednesday, ‘We see smartphones as hardware for entertainment and a component necessary to make our hardware brand sustainable. And younger generations no longer watch TV. Their first touch point is smartphone.'”
“The business, originally a joint venture with Sweden’s Ericsson that Sony took full control of in 2012, has a global market share of less than 1%, shipping just 6.5 million handsets annually, mainly to Japan and Europe, according to Sony’s financial statement,” Yamazaki reports. “As Sony aims to make the business profitable next financial year, it ceased production at its Beijing plant and streamlined some sales operations globally.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Confused thinking.
Sony is effectively selling zero smartphones. Apple alone sells more iPhones every eleven days than Sony sells all year.
We don’t know if Yoshida is confused because he sees them in Sony execs hands all day, but something’s causing his profound disconnect with reality on the smartphone front.