Sony’s smartphone business is getting tinier by the day

Jan 28, 2015 07:30 GMT  ·  By

Sony has been through ups and downs throughout the years with one notable pitfall being the selling of its VAIO laptop business to a Japanese company.

The tech giant also exited the US eBook reader market, leaving Kobo to fend for the needs of users who still owned Sony digital reading devices.

The company did all that so it could focus better on its smartphone business, but as it appears, things aren’t extremely rosy in the Xperia department either.

Earlier this month we told you that selling off the smartphone business was shaping up to be a real possibility for Sony. The company’s CEO Kazuo Hirai said he was prepared to take some drastic measures in order to maintain the company afloat.

Are things getting sour for Sony's smartphone business?

Well, this scenario is now being fueled by another report coming out from Reuters (via Japanese website Nikkei Business) which says that Sony is planning to lay off 1,000 employees from its smartphone division.

The job cuts will be applied in Europe and China and come after Sony cut another 1,000 jobs back in October. Suddenly, Sony’s smartphone division is getting smaller and smaller, but how much will it shrink?

According to the information, Sony’s goal is to cut up to 5,000 jobs (or 30%) by the end of March 2016 fiscal year. Sony is expected to announce the results of its latest earning reports covering the period between April and December on February 4. That’s the same day the layoffs will be made official.

While all this internal turmoil is going on, Sony is also prepping to unveil its next flagship, the Xperia Z4. Originally, we had expected the device to go live at MWC 2015, but recent information seems to pinpoint to the fact that the phone will get delayed until this summer.

The push-back could be happening due to the pesky Snapdragon 810 issues we have been telling you about for the past few weeks. Or it could be that increasingly less staff at Sony translates into slow development of the upcoming phone.