Sony says it will withdraw smartphone business from India
1 min read . Updated: 22 May 2019, 02:51 PM IST
Premium- Sony sees smartphones as hardware for entertainment and a component necessary to make its hardware brand sustainable
- It has segregated the global smartphone market into focus and defocus regions; Sony will withdraw from the latter and India falls into it
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.
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.
Sony's consumer electronics hardware business "has centred on entertainment since our foundation, not daily necessities like refrigerators and washing machines," 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," he said. "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.
As Sony aims to make the business profitable next financial year, it ceased production at its Beijing plant and streamlined some sales operations globally.
Instead, Sony has segregated its attention globally with respect to the sales and marketing of Sony phones. It listed out focus regions that include Japan, Europe, Taiwan, and Hong Kong and defocused regions including Africa, Australia, Canada, India, Mexico, and the Middle East. It will be withdrawing from these markets.
Yoshida also said he is confident in improving profitability at the pictures business.
Separately, Reuters reported Daniel Loeb's hedge fund Third Point is again building a stake in the company, as part of its second campaign for change at Sony in six years.
Third Point wants Sony to explore options for some of its business units, including its movie studio, which the fund believes has attracted takeover interest, people familiar with the matter previously said.
"It was good that in the past Third Point came in and we had various discussions on the pictures business," Yoshida said. Sony has sharply improved disclosures of the pictures business since then, he said.
The management team of the pictures unit has been "reshuffled almost entirely over the last three or four years," Yoshida said.
With inputs from Reuters.
