When looking at Sony's recent fiancial results:
https://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/IR/library/fr/16q2_sonyspeech.pdf
which tell the same story of lack of success like Nikon recently showed, still there are some very interesting things going on.
So Sony sensor business is bleeding money with a loss. Not new. Probably they will need to sell that area sometime soon if they can not get more successful (or sucessful at all).
But the really intersting bit is the collapse in the camera business (recent forecasts versus previous year):
- Sales (units) - down by -38%
- Sales (money) - down by -18%
- Operating Income - down by -51%
The first message here is that obviously a shift is there
towards to more high price items as sales (money) is less down than units. Seemingly they still have some compacts selling and that is even less than last year, so the units drop of quickly. Much fewer cheap items, a little more expensive items.
But at the same time their
operating income drops like a rock.
So either they have huge overhead costs which are not very variable or their high price items are anything but profitable and they actually made most profits with point and shoots. I do find this surprising.
One more year like this and Sony's camera business will be in the reds as well.
It would be sad to see Sony be doomed again.