Sony to cut 8000 staff

By Chris Keall | Wednesday December 10 2008 - 12:20pm
Sony has announced a plan to slash 8000 staff worldwide, or 5% of its workforce.

The consumer electronics giant will also shutter six of its 57 manufacturing plants, and reduce product investment 30% by 2010 in favour of more outsourcing.

The decade began badly for Sony as Apple’s iPod obliterated its Walkman businesses, and the download craze hit its music and movie interests.

2008 had been shaping up as a comeback year for the company, with its Blu-ray seeing off Toshiba’s HD-DVD in the race to dominate a high definition successor to DVD, and its Blu-ray-packing PlayStation3 finally pulling ahead of Microsoft’s Xbox 360 (which had relied on a HD-DVD add-on for high def video).

Better, after a slow start Sony’s Bravia LCD TVs proved a hit in the fast-growing flatscreen television market as the company made a prescient bet against plasma.

But in October, the strong Yen and emerging recession saw Sony cut its fiscal year profit outlook by 40%. Panasonic and Samsung’s consumer electronics divisions also issued profit warnings around the same time.

Now, with the recession-hitting full force, and a savage flatscreen TV price war driving prices to astonishingly low levels, Sony is instituting worldwide cuts. Sony New Zealand had no immediate comment about whether the local operation would be affected.