Sony to cut 8,000 jobs

[Gaurnim]

Full title of the article:

Sony to cut 8,000 jobs, slash $1.1 billion in costs

Link to the article:
http://www.reuters.com/article/newsO...4B816720081209

Excerpt:

TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan's Sony Corp said it will cut about 4 percent of its workforce, curb investment and pull out of businesses to save $1.1 billion a year, as the financial crisis ravages demand for its electronics products.

The 8,000 job cuts are the biggest announced by an Asian firm so far in the crisis and underscore the challenges facing Sony, which has fallen behind Apple Inc's iPod in portable music and is losing money on flat TVs.

No specific word on ebook-related job cuts, let's hope it doesn't have any impact.

[HarryT]

See also the article on the BBC News web site:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7772597.stm

As well as the 5% reduction in jobs, there will (more significantly as far as we're concerned, perhaps) be a 30% reduction in investment in the Electronics Division (which covers eBook readers). Any product line considered unprofitable is likely to be dropped.

[Gaurnim]

I was about to say that it was an "interesting" addition to the news article above, but I don't think that the term is adequate.
Maybe "preoccupying" is more adapted to the possible meaning for eBooks.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

I hate to speculate, but this may be why Sony showed interest in Read an E-book Week 09 a few months ago, but has gone a bit quiet on the subject lately.

[zelda_pinwheel]

server has found another article with even more dire news :

Sony Will Cut 16,000 Jobs as Recession Curbs Demand (Update3)

Dec. 9 (Bloomberg) -- Sony Corp., the world’s second-biggest consumer-electronics maker, plans to eliminate 16,000 jobs in the largest reduction announced by a Japanese company since the credit crunch drove the world into recession.

Sony will curb investments, outsource production and move away from unprofitable businesses by March 2010 to save more than 100 billion yen ($1.1 billion) a year, the company said today. The cuts include 8,000 full-time employees, or 5 percent of the company’s electronics workforce, and another 8,000 part-time and seasonal workers, Sony said.

read the whole article here.

[Server]

Originally Posted by Gaurnim

Full title of the article:


Link to the article:
http://www.reuters.com/article/newsO...4B816720081209

Excerpt:


No specific word on ebook-related job cuts, let's hope it doesn't have any impact.

Actually looks to be more than 8000

[astra]

No more new gen Sony Readers?

[Gaurnim]

Yep, it seems like the first articles only mentioned the full-time jobs, overlooking the part-time and seasonal workers.

[Alisa]

Originally Posted by astra

No more new gen Sony Readers?

I wonder if the Reader business is in the black or not? It's a small division, I would imagine, but if it's cash-positive there's no reason to cut it. If they do, they may keep the cut small. I work in a small, little-known but profitable division of a huge, unprofitable company that just had big layoffs. We didn't get touched. My main concern when it comes to seeing new readers is that it looks like they may be putting less into R&D. That would be sad. Even though I'm a Kindle fan, I like having competition in the market and Sony is good at pushing the envelope with the hardware.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Well, it doesn't look as if Sony's device R&D had any impact on Amazon's device R&D at all...

[vivaldirules]

I hate reading things like this. I couldn't care less about the short-term future of the Sony Readers. The fear and havoc that comes with such large scale layoffs is depressing.

[Alisa]

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

Well, it doesn't look as if Sony's device R&D had any impact on Amazon's device R&D at all...

We've only seen one generation of Kindle so it's hard to say just yet. Kindle isn't the only other device out there, either.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by vivaldirules

I hate reading things like this. I couldn't care less about the short-term future of the Sony Readers. The fear and havoc that comes with such large scale layoffs is depressing.

It's not really "large scale" in the overall scheme of things. 5% job losses within a division of a company can generally be achieved without anyone being made compulsorily redundant through such things as early retirement, offering people good deals to leave voluntarily, a block on new recruitment, etc.

In the 15 years I've worked for my current employer, it's gone through a number of such exercises, most recently only a few months ago.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

Well, it doesn't look as if Sony's device R&D had any impact on Amazon's device R&D at all...

I'm not sure that one can say that. Don't forget that Sony were the first company to come out with an eInk book reader - the Librie. That's been influential on everything that's followed.

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by HarryT

It's not really "large scale" in the overall scheme of things. 5% job losses within a division of a company can generally be achieved without anyone being made compulsorily redundant through such things as early retirement, offering people good deals to leave voluntarily, a block on new recruitment, etc.

In the 15 years I've worked for my current employer, it's gone through a number of such exercises, most recently only a few months ago.

True enough but the changes are significant for a different reason. It seems that Sony is pulling production and service back to Japan. The entire TV production in the US is being shut down and even the service centers are being shut down. So it is more than just reducing the work force.

Dale