| Confirming the report from earlier this week, Sony president and CEO Kazuo Hirai said the company will cut 10,000 jobs globally as part of a big "One Sony" reorganization. The company has five immediate goals: it wants to strengthen its core businesses — digital imaging, gaming and mobile — turn around its TV business, expand into emerging markets, create new businesses and fuel innovation and, finally, realign the business portfolio and optimize its resources. The 10,000 layoffs and the management shuffling (Kazuo Hirai replaced Howard Stringer as president and CEO in February 2012) pretty much cover that last bit. The details on strengthening its core businesses include a lot of consolidation — for example, Sony will integrate its smartphone, tablet and VAIO businesses, and reduce the number of product models in its TV business. As for innovation, Sony is entering medical technology and life science industry, and it plans to "aggressively promote" 4K technology, which brings four times the resolution of Full HD. We'll see 4K-enabled products in pro equipment, but Sony also promises to bring the technology into the high-end consumer product segment, which means our brand new Full HD TVs might look obsolete in a couple of years. All of these will cost around $926 million, and Sony projects it will result in net sales of 6 trillion yen ($74 billion) and an operating income margin of 5% in its electronics business by 2014. http://mashable.com/2012/04/12/sony-confirms-layoffs/ |
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