After it slashed its forecast, Sony today has announced its fiscal results for the second quarter ended September 30 and it wasn't a pretty sight. Its net profit nosedived 72 percent to 20.7 billion yen (US$212.4 million). Sales were only down a half a percent at 2.07 trillion yen.
While the electronics division was hit very hard, as Sony's digital cameras and PCs had a tough time with the competition and lower prices, the game division actually saw its sales rise by more than 10 percent to 268.5 billion yen (US$2.58 billion). The game division was also able to narrow its loss from 96.7 billion yen to 39.5 billion yen (US$379 million). Sony said this improvement was "primarily due to PS3 hardware cost reductions and increased sales of PS3 software, as well as strong sales of PSP hardware."
Looking specifically at the PS3 business, PS3 hardware sold through 2.43 million units worldwide for the quarter (up 1.12 million units or 86 percent) and PS3 software climbed by 10.7 million units to 21.1 million. Comparing Sony's results to Microsoft's own fiscal report for the same quarter shows that the PS3 managed to outsell the Xbox 360 during those three months on a global basis. Unlike Microsoft's game division, however, SCE continues to post losses. Life-to-date, the global Xbox 360 installed base is at 24 million compared to 16.84 million for PS3.
The PSP business saw mixed results. While hardware sales climbed to 3.18 million units, software sales fell by 0.8 million units. As for the aging PS2, both hardware and software sales declined. PS2 hardware decreased by 0.78 million units to 2.5 million, while software dropped 14.9 million units to 23.1 million.
Overall, Sony – which makes much of its money on exports – continues to be hurt by the strength of the yen against the dollar and the euro. Sony's shares hit a 16-year low on Monday.
