Despite being stuck with a small market share as it struggles to drive profits, Sony Mobile is adamant about fighting to stay alive in the business. Perhaps a little background is in order, so there you go — by the end of the company’s first fiscal quarter, June 30, Sony Mobile suffered an operating loss of $188 million and revenue decline by 16.3%, caused by “significant decrease in smartphone unit sales”, among other problems. Sony actually considered the option of selling its unprofitable mobile business, like it did with the VAIO line of laptops.
But, following the storm of “Sony Mobile may call it quits” headlines, CEO Hiroki Totoki affirmed that Sony Mobile won’t ever sell or exit the current mobile business, which is very much what fans of Xperia handsets wanted to hear. Yet, nothing says “yeah, we’re doing this!” like opening up the company’s first smartphone factory in 20 years!
Asian business publication Nikkei reports that Sony is investing “several billion yen” in equipping an existing site in the Pathum Thani province, Thailand, with an end-to-end production system covering chip mounting through assembly. Its gears will be set in motion in fiscal 2016, with initial output set to reach several million units a year.
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