Sony's annual report which shows us the state of affairs within the company has been released today! In recent years things haven't been too great, but for once there's a few little hints here and there that things might be starting to turn around!
The good news for Sony was that the company is profitable again! This was mainly down to the film and financial services departments of the company as well as lots of asset sales! Sony still seem to be struggling with consumer electronics, but we'll go into that in a bit more detail now!
 |
| The Sony Xperia Z! |
In the smartphone and tablet department things have been going well and the company is looking to build on their solid position with, 'accelerate the speed with which it develops and rapidly delivers compelling products to customers,' so essentially Sony want to cut down their development time to get products to market sooner, which is a solid thing to do given that the flagships for this year are rocking Qualcomm's older Snapdragon S4 Pro processors instead of the new Snapdragon 600's which everyone else is deploying!
The story is somewhat similar when it comes to computers, but the real focus will be on a new realignment which will see the company prioritizing profitability over increasing sales, which makes sense because Sony's laptops tend to target the higher end at the moment any way!
Imaging has always been a particular strength of Sony and the company seem to know it. There are plans in place to 'reinforce the professional camera line-up centring on 4K-compatible cameras, as well as cameras for cinematography.' The Japanese company are also looking at new revenue streams with things such as security, sports and medicine being the starting point for this. On a more mundane level consumers can expect compact cameras with 'enhance image quality... reduced size and weight, and higher-powered zoom,' all of which sounds pretty good to us!
Gaming is an interesting topic at the moment too, especially with yesterday's
reveal of the Xbox One, the ball is firmly back in Sony's court to see what they do with the PS4! There's not too much detail in this report, but the guys do say that it will arrive in time for the holidays this year and the aim is to offer 'a quality gaming experience only possible through a dedicated gaming system, and will also enable smartphone and tablet users to share in the enjoyment of PS4, even without owning one themselves.'
 |
The battle will be over the next generation of consoles as Sony focus
on gaming and Microsoft go after living room domination! |
The PS Vita will tie in quite closely with the PS4 and owners of both will be rewarded with exclusive content and there will be some interesting price reductions on the Vita, as well as some
more compelling games coming in the near future, especially focused around software downloads instead of physical game sales! The PS3 will be supported for a few more years, but there's not really much doing there now as the focus is shifting to the PS4!
And finally, when it comes to the TV business, things aren't looking great, but the company is pledging to continue to work on their 'Full HD TV models, while also expanding its 4K LCD TV line-up'. There will be a renewed focus on emerging markets because that's where the growth is at the moment with the hope that cost saving can bring this department back into profitability over the next few years!
If you're interested in checking the report out in more details then head over to
Sony's website here and let us know what you think about Sony's future in the comments below!
Via
Engadget.
