14 DAY TRIAL // Sony isn't doing so well recently, so in dire times it's best to keep your most lucrative and profitable department tight in order to keep making incredible products. Although an all-out separation isn't always the best solution, Sony thinks that its sensor division should not be part of Sony's core business anymore.
Called Sony Semiconductor Solutions, the brand-new company made from the former Sony image sensor department is meant to carry on what it did best: DSLR sensors for cameras. Apparently, Sony wants to better organize the internal hierarchy of its sensor department in order for a more streamlined flow of decision-making process to take place without having to face all sorts of greenlights from departments that have nothing to do with cameras.
This is logical, and in this sense Sony decided to place the new company in a string of satellite companies that will keep sensors as the main focus. The division will be separate from Sony's devices group as a large reorganization takes place while other groups, like batteries and storage, will be folded in other groups. Sony mentioned that the new company will work "alongside existing Sony group companies" by April 1, 2016.
Sony fragments internally for a more streamlined decision-making
TV and home entertainment divisions will now work as separate entities as well although there was a rumor, quite scandalous, that Sony will plan to sell them off. This wasn't true since the TV business is quite at the core of the very notion of Sony as a brand, so we probably won't be seeing Bravias being made by someone else anytime soon. Sony said that this process is made to increase "accountability" within each of the new divisions-turned separate companies, by splitting them one at a time.
To put things in context, Sony's sensors are selling well because it has very lucrative corporate contracts with smartphone builders like Apple that use Sony's sensors, together will DSLR manufacturers like Nikon and Sony's own cameras as well.
Unfortunately, Sony's other core businesses like gaming consoles, mobile, movies and music will have to become profitable by themselves from now on and not to rely on other more lucrative divisions.