Sony has reported this week that the company, for the fiscal year ended March 31st, had a loss of $1.04 billion USD, the first time the company has reported a loss since 1995. Perhaps even more notably, the company said it expects a bigger loss in upcoming quarters as sales slide and the Yen grows stronger against the US Dollar.
Revenue for the period also fell 13 percent to $81 billion USD, with the company blaming a number of factors including “the slowdown of the global economy, the appreciation of the yen and the decline in the Japanese stock market.”
The “PlayStation” division saw the biggest slowdown in sales year-on-year, mainly due to the strengthening Yen and a large decrease in sale of the aging PlayStation 2. Revenue in the division fell to $10.7 billion USD. Operating profit losses were cut in half however, to $597 million USD, thanks mostly to large reductions in the cost of manufacturing the PlayStation 3 gaming console.
Over 10 million PS3 units were sold for the year, along with 14 million PSPs and 8 million PS2 units. Software sales exploded for the PS3, up almost 100 percent to 103.7 million units. PSP software sales saw a decline of 10 percent.
For the Q4 2008, Sony reported that the Yen was 13 percent more expensive versus the USD and 30 percent more expensive versus the Euro compared to the fiscal year before it. For the upcoming year, Sony is predicting a $1.26 billion USD loss.
Result for: slowdown
Microsoft has revealed that its popular Zune media player has hit 2 million units sold since its launch in November 2006. What the figure also reveals however is low or flat growth for the device, especially compared to sales of the Apple iPod.
The company originally promised it would hit one million sales before June 2007 and it did so but since then has kept quiet on sales for its player or any predictions on it.
Despite the flat growth the sales still helped Microsoft move up a percentage point in overall US marketshare, from 3 to 4 percent. Those figures are courtesy of the NPD Group.
It seems, for now at least, that there is fragmentation in sales after the launch of the second generation of Zune players. The original million sales were from the original 30GB model but since November 2007, Microsoft has been selling two cheaper flash-based Zunes as well as two HDD-based players.
The slowdown in sales could possibly have nothing to do with Microsoft at all. The current US economic recession has staggered spending all across the board and non-necessities such as MP3 players are sure to see a hit. MP3 players are also approaching saturation in the market and there are fewer first time purchases being made, regardless of brand.
Apple continues to flourish however with their iPod lineup and still control the market handily. In the last quarter 10.6 million iPods were sold, over 5 times the amount of Zunes sold in almost 2 years.
