Sign in. It’s quick, free and it’s up to you.
An account is an optional way to support the work we do. Find out more.
SONY HAS BLAMED its struggling mobile phone division for the massive losses it expects to suffer over the next six months.
The company today told investors it was recording a huge “impairment charge” of 180 billion yen (€1.3 billion) representing all the goodwill it had credited to its ailing smartphones lines.
Sony is now predicting a net loss of about €1.65 billion over the 12 months to March 2015, backing up a loss of about €0.9 billion the previous year.
In a statement, the Japanese consumer electronics giant said the latest write-down had come after reviewing medium-term plans for its mobile division.
The company said its new strategy for the segment was to “reduce risk and volatility, and to deliver more stable profits”.
“This revision includes changing the strategy of the (mobile) segment in certain geographical areas, concentrating on its premium lineup, and reducing the number of models in its mid-range lineup,” it said.
Impairment and goodwill
Companies record an impairment charge when they write off now-worthless goodwill they had previously put a value on for their books.
Goodwill is based on working out how much “fair value” there is in its products or brands, although these figures should be routinely checked to make sure companies aren’t artificially inflating their worth.
It’s (not likely to be) a Sony
Despite booming global smartphone sales, which were this year up more than 25% on 2013 figures, Sony cut its expected annual sales in July from 50 million to 43 million units.
Its high-end Xperia phones have struggled to make an impact in a market dominated by Apple’s iPhone line and Samsung’s Galaxy products.
South Korean company Samsung, the world’s biggest mobile manufacturer accounting for about 25% of worldwide sales, last year shipped about 300 million phones.
READ: Sony may have come up with the best reason yet to buy an Xperia phone
READ: Games and box-office movies help Sony post surprise profit
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
Some bigger computer companies built in items to keep the mainframes at a certain speed then charged for speeding them up. An engineer would go out and remove a part which was like a restrictor on a car thus allowing the computer go faster. Charging plenty of money for doing so.
Most things have built in obsolescence now.
But car companies do the same thing. Same engine giving different power (or emissions cough VW) outputs depending on the software. Pay a mechanic to re-map the engine to get more power and sometimes more fuel efficiency from the engine.
I’m not aware of a remap ever giving more power and increased fuel efficiency, you normally sacrifice one for the other, so not quite the same
You really wonder eh
This is why I put clean Ubuntu installations on my machines…
Installed linux mint yesterday on a VM as I normally use Mac and Ubuntu, mint is not a bad OS for anyone jumping across from Windows
I bought a new laptop from Dell recently with a “Killer” Nic. No linux drivers :( WIndows 10 makes me cry. So the laptop is using a wifi dongle until I can find time to work a solution.
Wouldn’t happen if ruth coppinger was at the helm :-o
All these things are easy to find if you have anything about pcs and can usually be fixed easily so that isnt the problem the problem is if yhe wrong person finds it
To be fair.. DELL rarely make this type of mistake
AT WORK & AT HOME!
Dell OptiPlex 7040 Series $689.00
http://amzn.to/2bQ3dBf
have your say