Sony has announced its fiscal Q1 2013 earnings of 1712.7 billion yen ($17.3 billion) in revenue, up 13 percent year-on-year primarily due to favorable foreign exchange rates, a rise in financial services revenue, and of particular interest — an increase in smartphone sales, The Next Web reports.
The company’s operating income increased 30.1 billion yen year-on-year to 36.4 billion yen ($367 million), while it posted a net profit of 3.5 billion yen ($35 million), reversing the loss recorded during the same quarter a year ago.
Sony’s mobile products and communications unit (which includes mobile phones and personal computers) posted a 36.2 percent increase in sales to 389 billion yen ($3.9 billion) — due to a “significant” increase in the unit sales of smartphones and an increase in the average selling price of smartphones. This led to Sony recording an operating income of 5.9 billion yen ($60 million) for its mobile and PC unit during the first quarter, reversing the previous year’s loss of 28.1 billion yen in the same period.
However, Sony’s games unit recorded a widening in its operating loss to 14.8 billion yen ($149 million), primarily because of an increase in research and development expenses related to the upcoming introduction of its PlayStation 4.
The games unit posted essentially flat sales year-on-year at 117.9 billion yen ($1.2 billion) due to a decrease in unit sales of PlayStation 3, PlayStation Portable (PSP) and PlayStation 2. The company said sales to external customers declined 7.2 percent year-on-year.
Sony hasn’t been the most well-known Android manufacturer, but the company has made attempts to differentiate itself from its competitors by adding waterproofing to its Xperia Z smartphone — which is also a huge leap from its previous devices in design and size, TNW says.
Sony’s recent unveiling of its PlayStation 4 has also met with a lot of positive response, striking a clear win against Microsoft in their next-gen console faceoff at E3 – which could help it gain back some of the revenue lost for its games unit.
