Sony pins hopes on fast-growing emerging markets
Japan's Sony Corp. said Thursday it aimed to double its sales in the fast-growing markets of Brazil, Russia, India and China over the next three years and ramp up investment to keep its recovery on track.
The electronics icon also sketched out a vision of the future where consumers download Sony movies and music through televisions and other electronic goods produced by the company.
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The upbeat plan is in marked contrast to the group's previous three-year business strategies that involved heavy job cuts and plant closures to try to turn around its financial fortunes.
Sony aims to boost its annual revenue in the so-called BRIC countries of Brazil, Russia, India and China two-fold by March 2011 to two trillion yen (18.5 billion dollars).
"The BRIC countries are some of the fastest-growing economies worldwide. This is where the world's next billion consumers live," Sony chief executive Howard Stringer said at a press conference on the group's midterm strategy.
"These consumers desire the products and services we offer, and that spells huge opportunities for Sony," he said.
In the past year to March, about 75 percent of Sony's sales came from Japan, the United States and Europe.
But "so much more opportunities exist outside the core markets of Japan, North America and Europe," Stringer said.
"We have already achieved great success in India, and we can leverage this model in the BRIC countries and other emerging regions," he said.
Sony said it plans to invest 1.8 trillion yen over the next three years in its businesses, up from 1.4 trillion in the past three years to March 2008.
The move will help the group to expand its Blu-ray high-definition DVD business following a victory over a rival format pushed by Toshiba and its partners in a fight to set the standard for next-generation DVDs.
Sony also aims to converge its strengths in media and electronics goods so that customers downloads films or other content through televisions, game consoles or other products.
"Our mission is to simply be the leading provider of networked consumer electronics and entertainment," Stringer said.
The electronics giant has endured a difficult past few years amid tough competition from rival products such as Apple's iPod and Nintendo's Wii, but is now enjoying a strong recovery after shedding jobs and non-core assets.
The latest business plan comes almost three years after Stringer unveiled a plan to cut 10,000 jobs, dispose of a swathe of assets, axe 11 of its 65 manufacturing plants and one-fifth of its product line.
In 2003 Sony had announced 20,000 job cuts over three years to trim costs.
Sony said last month its full-year to March net profit almost tripled to hit a record high as brisk sales of digital cameras and laptop computers offset continued losses from the PlayStation 3 game console.
The group hopes its game unit will return to profit in the current fiscal year to March, said Kazuo Hirai, head of Sony Computer Entertainment.
Sony hopes that more people will buy the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Portable as the company makes non-game content such as films and television programmes available for downloading via the Internet.
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