Sony Corporation – The Japanese electronics, Sony Corporation has decided to cut off an additional 1,000 members of its workforce in the firm’s smartphone business across Europe and China.
The company has apparently intended to lay off more workers than originally planned in the hope of increasing its earnings,thereby reducing the workforce by nearly 30 percent to 5,000 through March 2016.
The 1,000 staff members will be in addition to the nearly 1,000 other workforce members that the company announced that they will drop in October last year.
According to the report, Sony is hereby expected to explain its new restructuring plan on February 4, when it will release its April-December 2014 financial report. This changes comes as a result of the company lagging far behind key competitors such as South Korea-based Samsung Electronics and the US-based Apple Corporation.
The electronics firm, the report said, is further expected to register an impairment loss of nearly 180 billion yen ($1.5 billion) in its smartphone business in the current fiscal year due to tough competition with Chinese manufacturers.
Meanwhile, Sony will probably not miss its forecast of a 40-billion-yen consolidated operating loss this fiscal year, since its image sensors and games segments are doing well.
According to the report, the smartphone business is expected to book an operating loss of nearly 200 billion yen in the current fiscal year. Sony aims to make the segment profitable in fiscal 2016 with the additional restructuring efforts.