Sony says don’t forget about us

Sony has reported positive first quarter at 15% year-on-year growth, with the majority of business units pitching in to the party.

Total revenues across the quarter stood at roughly $16.590 billion with sales in the financial services and semiconductors segments proving to be the top performers here. Sony might well be better known in the consumer world, but the boring stuff is what is making money. The semiconductors business brought in a weighty 41% year-on-year uplift, while financial services accounted for 30% growth.

That said, it would be unfair to take away the glory from other business units. The imaging products and solutions group grew 27%, game and network services was up 5%, home entertainment and sound increased almost 9%, the content business was up 12%, while music increased almost 19%. In fact, the only segment which was down was its mobile communications unit, which dropped 2.5% year-on-year.

On the semiconductor side of things, the gains have been attributed to a significant increase in unit sales of image sensors for mobile products, as well as the absence of the impact of a decrease in image sensor production due to the 2016 Kumamoto Earthquakes in the same quarter of the previous fiscal year.

The content side of the business is also an interesting one, as while the telcos are desperate to demonstrate their credentials in the big bad world of multi-play, such successes from Sony show that it is not going to be easy to steal revenues away from the traditional content businesses. A 12.3% increase was down to Television Productions and Media Networks, which was partially offset by lower sales in Motion Pictures. ‘The Last Tycoon’ and ‘Better Call Saul’ were two investments which are paying off strongly.

It’s been a good quarter for Sony, but the industry isn’t getting too excited just yet. Share price has barely moved, perhaps due to lasts years incidents such as the earthquake. It would appear to be back to normal business than anything to get to enthusiastic about. But well done anyway.