"Sony Corp, the world's largest consumer electronics maker, shocked investors on Thursday by falling far short of earnings targets and projecting a profit slide, blaming war worries and a costly restructuring plan," Reuters reports from Tokyo. The company made a loss of 111.14 billion yen in the January-March quarter. "Sony said PlayStation 2 shipments are expected to slip this fiscal year to 20 million units from last year's 22.5 million, but analysts had expected that hardware sales would soon run out of living rooms to conquer, while sales of game software titles would probably take up the slack."
AP meanwhile presented a different picture: "Sony profits surge, helped by movies, games". It seems that Sony's "profits rose to 115.5 billion yen ($963 million) for the fiscal year ended March 31 from 15.3 billion yen a year earlier. Sales edged down to 7.47 trillion yen ($62 billion) from 7.58 trillion yen." Good year; bad quarter.
