Sony Earnings Show Poor Mobile Performance, Better Q for Music, Gaming (Apr 28, 2017)
Sony results for the March quarter were out this morning, and they were a pretty mixed bag (this was also the end of its fiscal year, so some of the reporting you’ll see today relates to those year-end numbers, but I’ll focus on the quarter). The mobile business, which has has its share of ups and downs over the last few years, had another tough quarter, with a year on year drop in shipments and a drop back into the red following three quarters of profits. The music business did well but for reasons that have very little to do with music – the biggest boost in revenue came from a mobile game, while recorded music revenues were actually down as the twin declines in physical and downloads more than offset streaming growth for the third straight quarter. This is a problem I’m afraid will start to afflict all three major music labels in the near future. Sony Pictures had a down quarter and year, and had taken a big write down in the December quarter which affected full year results too. But the drop in revenues year on year was mostly in TV productions rather than motion pictures, which held up better. In gaming, Sony saw decent Playstation 4 shipments in the quarter, up a little year on year, and likely continues to lead Microsoft’s Xbox line by some margin as it has throughout this cycle.
via Sony (PDF)
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