According to the daily Japanese Nikkei paper, it appears Pioneer is on the verge of completely exiting the TV market.
Back in March the company said it would halt Plasma production to focus on LCD production. “We have judged that maintaining the cost competitiveness of plasma display panels, or PDPs, at projected sales volumes will be difficult going forward,” Pioneer said at the time.
Despite the great commercial success of its Kuro plasma line, the company has been losing money for a few quarters now on TV sales. If the report holds true, then Pioneer will cut their losses and move completely out of the market, instead joining forces with Sharp to make a stronger move into the DVD and Blu-ray standalone business.
Pioneer declined comment on the report but did note that they have been “actively evaluating” the company’s TV business since at least last March when it decided to cut out PDP production.
Result for: nikkei
Sony’s videogame unit, sometimes known as the “PlayStation” unit, has announced that it is expecting to see its losses shrink by about $956 million USD for the 12 months ended March 31, 2008. Because of PlayStation 3 start-up costs , the previous 12 month period had seen the division lose about $1.43 billion USD.
The figures are according to the Japanese Nikkei daily and the whole corporation is expected to see its operating profit increase five fold. Even with that growth however, the corporation is expected to miss its profit targets.
The January forecast was $3.91 billion USD but the Nikkei predicts that the company will only see a $3.63 billion profit, far below its estimate.
Sales of TVs and digital cameras were very strong for the year and official full year earnings will be released next week. Sony spokespeople said they would not comment on the Nikkei’s report.
