Technology and media powerhouse Sony are looking to cut around 10,000 jobs worldwide over the next 12 months in an attempt to return to profit according to Japanese news reports – a 6% cut to its global workforce. This all comes in the aftermath of a pretty brutal financial report earlier this year when they reported a loss of $2.1 billion for Q4 2012.
There have already been some big changes recently and announced by the Japanese corporation with it taking over complete control of the Sony-Ericsson mobile phone brand (and rebranding as just Sony), and the recent announcement that they will be merging their LCD panel operations with previous competitors Toshiba and Hitachi to take on the leaders in the field – namely Samsung and LG.
All this streamlining and effeciency savings are definitely useful for the company, but what it really needs is to develop some flagship smartphones and tablets that can compete more directly with Apple and Samsung. Their recent Xperia S phones were specced beautifully, but they were massively let down by only running Android 2.3.5 (Gingerbread) at launch just a month or two ago – a good five months after Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) was released. Software and user experience has long been an issue with Sony’s consumer products, and it is about time someone at the company took responsibility for getting them up-to-speed and competitive on this front.