Sony announced its third quarter results for the three months to 31 December 2014 earlier today. Sales increased by 6% year-on-year to 2,558 billion yen ($21,139 million), which was driven in part by higher mobile sales reflecting an increase in smartphone units. Sony sold 11.9 million Xperia units during the quarter, an 11% increase over the prior year – incidentally this is the highest number of phones that Sony has sold in a quarter.
However, it wasn’t all good news. Sony cut its forecast for full year shipments once again, from 41.0 million to 39.2 million. Remember, Sony’s original forecast was 50m that was then cut to 43m and again to 41m. This implies that Sony will ship 8.0 million units during the last quarter, a 9% reduction year-on-year.
Sony flagged that the lower unit sales was primarily due to an “expected decrease in unit sales of smartphones mainly in the Asia Pacific region”. A bright spot is that Sony expects “average selling prices will be maintained longer than anticipated”. This is no doubt due to a higher mix of sales of the premium Xperia Z series.
Sony also announced that it would be reducing the headcount in its mobile division by 2,100. A cut of 1,000 people was already announced last September, so this is an additional 1,100 cuts as was previously rumoured.
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