Sony to be 'little bit' short of 25 million TV goal
VP Hiroshi Yoshioka says company may not sell the 25 million TVs it expected this fiscal year, as competition remains fierce, according to Bloomberg.
Sony may not be able to meet its goal of selling 25 million TVs during its current fiscal year, the question apparently now being how far off the mark it will be.
Hiroshi Yoshioka, a Sony vice president, said today that the company would fall short of the 25 million target by "a little bit," according to a story in Bloomberg.
Overall, Sony's electronics sales are inline with those from the previous fiscal year in developing countries and have actually grown in emerging markets, said Yoshioka, who runs the TV business, added Bloomberg. But the TV division is still being hurt by a highly competitive marketplace and isn't likely to show a profit for the fiscal year ending next March.
Yoshioka, who previously ran Sony's audio division, took over the languid TV business in early 2008 from Takashi Fukuda. At that time, Sony had finally started enjoying a rebound in consumer electronic sales but was still seeing poor results from its TV unit.
The company's higher-end and expensive Bravia line of TVs was facing competition from lower-priced brands, which pushed down the price of LCD TVs in general. Sony tried to counterattack by offering its own inexpensive and basic models, a strategy that helped but has still failed to turn around the TV business.
Faced with several years of losses in the TV unit, Sony has been pushing new TV technologies, such as Internet-enabled sets and 3D TV, to revive consumer demand and try to push the division back on a road to profitability.