The end of Xperia may be near

Sony has announced its earnings for the 2014 fiscal year along with forecasts for the next, and the numbers don’t give the company much basis for it to continue to produce certain struggling products.

Sony made a net profit of $571 million off $68 billion in revenue for the year ending March 31st, 2015, but lost $1.05 billion overall mostly due to many restructuring changes.

Sony predicts a 3.8 per cent fall in revenue for the next year even though it expects to make 320 billion yen in operating profit and 140 billion yen in net profit. But its worth considering where all that money will come from.

Sony is expecting its devices division, which includes its successful image sensor unit that produces components for iPhone and other products, to generate 16.5 per cent in revenue and attain a 36 per cent higher operating profit.

The very profitable movie business is also expected to grow over the next year. Gaming will more or less remain the same with the Playstation 3 generation receding and the Playstation 4 generation growing rapidly stronger.

Unfortunately, the mobile division is another story entirely. It was by far the company’s biggest cash-losing point in the 2014 fiscal year, making an operating loss of 217.6 billion yen following a 176 billion yen impairment charge from the smartphone and tablet business, plus restructuring costs from the sale of VAIO.

Although Sony doesn’t think things will get too bad in the next year, mobile is still the only major division that it’s expecting to lose money from, forecasting a 7.1 per cent drop in revenue and an operating loss of 39 billion yen.

Sony is estimating slipping revenues and falling profits in the camera and home appliances divisions, but a case for keeping around those divisions can be made; the widely acclaimed Alpha and RX cameras have an obvious synergy with the market-leading image sensor division, and products like Walkman and Bravia are crucial to Sony’s identity and brand. None of them is necessarily harming the company as much as the mobile division, which doesn’t seem to have prospects of making a positive impact on the company any time soon, if at all.

Is Xperia the next VAIO?