Continue or not to manufacture TVs, a dilemma for Sony

After ten years and more than $ 7 billion in losses, the unit of Sony Corp. televisions is about to re-register an annual profit. But one question remains in the air: really worth keeping this business, once so revered?
Masashi Imamura, who heads the Division of televisions, says she still offers value for the consumer electronics company Japan's most famous, even at a time when the traditional television comes losing audience for other types of digital content to low-cost rivals and newcomers to the market, such as the American Vizio Inc. and China's Hisense co.reduce the margins of established TV makers.
"Without the TV, Sony will not be able to provide customers with the emotional experiences that we strive to produce," said Sony's vet. Executive in one of his first interviews since the TV business became a separate unit, fully independent, in the middle of this year.
But the operation of the Sony TV that is emerging after ten years of market-errors as the migration delay for the plasma screens and liquid crystal-is much more modest than the who brought the world the TVs of cathode ray tube Trinitron that dominated the living rooms of 70 years until the beginning of 2000.
In the third quarter of this year, Sony took a participation of 8% on turnover of the global TV, well behind the 27% of the South Korean Samsung Electronics Co. and 15% of LG Electronics Inc., another maker of South Korea, according to research firm DisplaySearch. Sony predicts that sales in its segment of audio and entertainment for the home, which includes televisions, sound systems, DVD players and other audiovisual devices, will earn about 1.1 trillion yen (US $ 9.25 billion) in the fiscal year that ends in March 2018. In the current year, the company expects sales in the sector up slightly, to 1.2 trillion yen.
The TV Unit will register a meager operating profit this year, with the margin rising to between 2% and 4% until fiscal year 2018, according to estimates from Sony.
Some analysts say that without a margin of at least 5%, doesn't make much sense for Sony to continue manufacturing TVs, and that the firm should focus on their most promising operations, among them the PlayStation videogames, camera sensors to smartphones and production of movies and TV shows.
"If the thread is unable to develop a realistic plan for growth, he should be a candidate for a split," said Eiichi Katayama, head of research at Bank of America Merrill Lynch in Japan.
The CEO of Sony, Kazuo Hirai, has said the company is open to a partnership in the TV market. And Imamura not ruled out a sale if the deal ever stumble. The Executive said that "a lot of plans," including a new lean operation, are being considered "on several levels" If the absence of consistent profit persist. "Keep the TV business is important, but sustain the management of Sony's business as a whole is more essential."
Even if your TV unit to be profitable, Sony faces tough choices while trying to run a business with banks increasingly low.
During his long period of slump, Sony focused on price and design, introducing lower-cost televisions and very thin screens to remain competitive, but the latest devices were built based on their traditional strengths of image quality and sound, said Imamura.
"The difference is clear, especially in view of DVDs or cartoons on Blu-ray," says Junpei Irie, mechanical engineer of Kyoto, Japan, that last month spent nearly $ 2,000 on a TV Sony 4 k.
Imamura says that, instead of seeking market share, Sony will focus on high-quality models, like the so-called 4 k televisions, which offer a resolution four times greater than the conventional high-definition TVs. 4 k equipment sales come from 2012 by boosting revenue growth in the TV area.
The DisplaySearch predicts that, in General, the 4 k TVs will account for 19% of the total revenue of the industry this year worldwide, despite represent only 8% of handsets sold, and those numbers should climb to 45% and 27%, respectively, in 2017.
In the era of so-called smart TVs that connect to the internet, Imamura says he wants to improve the software interfaces to make the content available on cloud easier to access, so that users have to push less buttons on their remotes. He says his team is working in close collaboration with engineers of the PlayStation division and unit of Sony, Xperia smartphones to streamline connections to other devices.
"The TV should be simple and stress free because people watch when they're relaxed," says Imamura. "That's our definition of smart TV."