What a past couple of months it’s been for Sony. First came the hacking scandal, then came disappointing sale numbers. Now people are being laid off.
Sony lays off workers, 1,000 more of them. We’re not including the over 1,000 workers laid off back in October 2014. In fact, by March 2015, around 5,000 workers are expected to lose their jobs. Most of these job losses will be in Europe and China and most will involve smartphone manufacturing. Come April 2015, Sony is expected to announce a whole new restructuring plan. You see, Sony has lost over 1.5 billion dollars in the smartphone game, thanks to the strength of their competitors. But it’s not just them. The smartphone business in general is bracing to lose billions this year, and Sony is making a restructuring plan to make sure the 2016 year is profitable. It almost seems like they’ve given up on the 2015 year, and it’s only January. But this year, Sony is expected to sale 9 million fewer phones than hoped for. They want to cut down their Chinese sales while focusing on Western markets, like Japan and the US. Production is expected to decrease 30%, but they’re going to focus on the more sophisticated, expensive smartphones. They want to invest in smartphones that will turn your appliances off and on and apps that are security based (have you seen certain commercials where you can see people watching who comes from their tablet?)
Like I said, it’s been a hard year for Sony, and it doesn’t look like it’s going to get better anytime soon. But it looks like they’re trying to make the right moves. I don’t like for anyone to lose their job. But maybe Sony should have done a better job planning smartphones and studying the competition before jumping in the smartphone game. It sounds like they underestimated their competitors, and now they got the best of them. Now they have to re-do their whole smartphone plan all over again. What’s the lesson here?