The CEO of Sony said that the company will boost investment in its PlayStation and camera sensors business over the next three years.
But Kazuo Hirai said today that it may well exit the smartphone business and divest itself of its TV unit too.
Sony has already got out of PCs and is engaged in restructuring which have seen thousands of people made redundant.
Hirai told reporters in a briefing that his goal was to make Sony profitable – it expects to turn in an operating loss for its financial year, which ends on the 31st of March.
Earlier this week, Sony released its intelligent glasses – which have no guarantee of making returns following Google’s decision to go back to basics on its own version of the devices.
Video games, camera sensors and entertainment are all areas which are profitable, but Hirai is tacitly saying that Sony isn’t the giant it once was, when whatever it launched set the scene for others to follow.
It’s little surprise that Sony is getting out of smartphones. Samsung and Apple rule the roost but manufacturers in mainland China are selling smartphones at knock down prices with razor thin margins – that’s already had an effect on Samsung’s profits.
