Sony Slashes 10,000 Jobs

redletterdave writes "Sony will cut about 10,000 jobs, which equates to about six percent of its global workforce, by the end of the year. The move comes after the Tokyo-based electronics firm more than doubled its loss forecast on April 5 to $2.9 billion, and the recent hiring of a new CEO, Kazuo Hirai, on April 1. Hirai looks to downsize Sony and pivot the company in a new direction to get out of the red for the first time in four years. The company will reportedly sell off its chemical products division, cutting about 3,000 workers in the process, and also make cuts within its small and midsize LCD operations. Sony did not say if it would cut these jobs in Japan, abroad, or both."

Comments

Electronics and music hugely profitable

[CoderExpert]

Just wanted to note this before slashdotters get all jiggly about the evilness of PS3 and Sony's music divisions. They are actually Sony's most profitable divisions, and it seems like Sony wants to cut out the less profitable divisions like chemical products. PS4 is already in the production and as noted on Slashdot before, will contain even more DRM. So this is not really "news for nerds" at all, as it's completely different divisions of Sony that will get the cut.

Re:Electronics and music hugely profitable

[Sir_Sri]

LCD manufacturing and chemicals used in batteries very much are news for nerds.

Re:Electronics and music hugely profitable

[tripleevenfall]

but the article does mention the LCD operations shut down

No, it doesn't mention "the LCD operations shut down", but TFA mentions "mak[ing] cuts within its small and midsize LCD operations" to better compete with Samsung. So this is a reconfiguration of business designed to increase their investment and competitiveness in that market, pretty much the opposite of what you write.

Re:Electronics and music hugely profitable

[Dogtanian]

The Walkman is a histroical footnote nowadays...

It's worth remembering that the Walkman was *the* portable music player for almost two decades. Sony was a big company with brand recognition and the resources to develop devices that would continue that lead into the MP3 era. The market was theirs to lose.

But they squandered the opportunity, letting *Apple* become the dominant player. (Circa the mid-to-late 90s, I'm sure that the suggestion that Apple- a company that was primarily a personal computer manufacturer back when that was a very different market to audio entertainment- was likely to take over their dominant market position).

Much as I dislike aspects of Apple's behaviour, their foresight in developing and promoting the iPhone- even though they would have known that it would eat into classic-style iPod sales- cannibalising their own product, rather than letting someone else cannibalise it, and reaching even greater heights in the process- contrasts sharply with Sony's protectionist, insular, NIH approach to file-based digital media and the MP3 age.

Not to worry

[NoNonAlphaCharsHere]

I understand they're still looking for rootkit developers.

I'm hoping...

[ickleberry]

They'll close their DRM-peddling division. Of course with my luck Sony will be repositioning themselves as a DRM company

Re:I'm hoping...

[Anrego]

Sounds like they are going full steam ahead with DRM in PS4 (playstation and music still being profitable (possibly the most profitable) sections of Sony). This just sounds like they are trimming some fat so to speak. Ultimately most of the people who care about DRM are probably pissed off enough with Sony not to buy the PS4 anyway, so there really is no reason for them to get away from it.

Fire the shovelware writers.

[jameskojiro]

Maybe they should fire the shovelware writers that write the stuipid applets that sys inthe syste tray that get installed when ever you install a device driver for a sony peripheral.

Gee, I install the SONY monitor and now I have a systray applet eating CPU time and whatnot and while it supposedly is supposed to help me control the monitor but it leads itself in the tray so it doesn't "Take so long to startup" when I run it that one time to adjust the monitor settings.... When running it from the start menu and waiting an extra 2 seconds for it to load is going to take more time than the cumulative 30 minutes over the lifetime of the PC that is wasts because it slowing everything else down with it's CPU usage and memory consumption....

Sorry, I just hate installing drivers and having to install stuipid shit that I have to go back and remove after every damn driver install. Drivers are "supposed" to be only the driver, I don;t need no damn systray applet for USB Hub, Printer, scanner, DVD writer and LCD monitor.

Bad Karma Sony, Bad Karma...

[dryriver]

There was a time - in the 80s, 90s - when Sony was perhaps THE company to buy quality products from. A Sony CRT TV or VCR was sturdy, reliable, and offered a high quality (visual) experience for the time. A Sony Walkman or Discman was, again, a quality product that was most usable and dependable. A Sony Betamax or VHS home-video camera, and later its much smaller (digital) handycams would, similarly, give you a quality home video experience. Then, at some point, Sony started going downhill in terms of corporate philosophy: Putting proprietary, expensive & incompatible Sony memory-sticks into Sony digital cameras? Selling 60GB HDD videocameras with no manual focus-ring, and not entirely reliable always-on autofocus? Putting DRM on music CDs, in PC Games, and all over the Playstation 3 experience? Branding handycam lenses "Zeiss Vario-Tessar" to lure buyers, even though the lenses are manufactured by Sony, not Zeiss (Sony just bought the right to call them "Zeiss" lenses)? Selling large, heavy, expensive LCD TVs while advertising that they include the fantabulous "Bravia Engine" (a collection of very, very mediocre video sharpening/upscaling/color/contrast algorithms). Sony Vaio laptops that are seriously expensive, while offering only very mediocre hardware specs? Killing HD-DVD, then failing to offer a decent (low) price on BluRay players and movies. Being a main player in demanding that all HD content be played back through HDMI cables - what was so bloody "wrong" with analogue HD cables? While Sony was slowly loosing its "focus on the user experience" and on "end-user and buyer sattisfaction" in particular, once far lesser brands like Korean Samsung zipped onto the scene with products that look, perform and, overall, please better, and without Sony's premium pricing attached. I'm sorry that Sony has fallen so low. It used to be my go-to brand for consumer electronics. But Sony isn't a company that learns from experience. I personally think that Playstation 4 will flop badly - at least initially - if Sony persists in forcing hardcore DRM and always-on-internet-to-play type shit on PS4 gamers. Wake up, Sony! Wake up before your corporate-crapfest-philosophy costs another 10,000 or 20,000 Sony employees their jobs. (Will Sony actually wake up? Not a chance, I think. PS4 will quite likely wind up being a horrid DRM fest that may actually drive some gamers back to gaming on a PC...)

Downsizing their customer base

[Pf0tzenpfritz]

So, downsizing their customer base didn't work anymore?

List of Sony Chemical products...

[readandburn]

http://www.sonycid.jp/en/products/ (I'm sorry to post something informative rather than something bashing Sony and/or hilarious "jokes".)

Zombie Company

[alexander_686]

I am going to have to disagree with your opinion. From what I have read from other articles, Sony is losing money on LCDs and is trying to get out of the market.

Manufacturing LCD is very capital intensive. That is, the initial outlay to build the plant is high. So while Sony is making money on the variable costs (i.e. the cost of materials, labor, etc) is can’t justify all of the capital that’s tied up to it. It can’t sell it because there a glut of LCD manufacturing capacity right now.

So they are turning it into a Zombie. They won’t invest any more money in the plant, and they don’t expect anything from it, but they will just let it putter along as long as they can cover the variable costs.

Re:sony rootkit - is 7 years enough?

[Anonymous Coward]

I say we don't move on until at least one Sony exec serves serious prison time for using their music CDs as a vector to install a virus onto users PCs.
An ordinary hacker would have served time, but because Sony is a super-criminal with countless victims they remain free. Not acceptable.

Re:sony rootkit - is 7 years enough?

[NeverSuchBefore]

It was despicable but it was just one division (a joint venture at that) and it was 7 years ago so I think it is time to move on.

I'm not going to "move on" when they still have the same exact attitude: harm your customers (with DRM) to stop the big evil pirates. I'm tired of collective punishment. One recent and obvious example of this mentality is the removal of OtherOS (some people like to justify it by saying that harming only a few of your customers somehow makes it okay). Another is the planned DRM for PS4.

No, they haven't changed. At all. They had no reason to.

Re:Yuk it up, kids...

[CanHasDIY]

Geeks are the most selfish and entitled people on the planet.

You've obviously never met a politician, or executive type.

Re:Its about profit

[Lev13than]

I wonder how many millions of dollars bonus the CEO will earn by cutting the workforce so drastically...

Executives are being asked to return their bonuses, so don't think it's a big win for him.

Sony Bourne Again Shell

[tepples]

We'll be waiting for your Sony bash

Sony bash hasn't been around since PS3 firmware 3.21.