Sony’s profit falls on yen, lagging cellphones, Japan quake

TOKYO – Sony Corp.’s fiscal first-quarter profit dipped 74 per cent to 21.2 billion yen ($205 million), as earnings got hammered by a strong yen and lagging smartphone sales, and a quake that struck southwestern Japan caused damage and production halts in its semiconductor business.

The Japanese electronics and entertainment giant reported Friday that April-June sales slipped nearly 11 per cent year-on-year to 1.6 trillion yen ($15.7 billion).

Quarterly profit last year totalled 82.4 billion yen.

Tokyo-based Sony, the maker of Bravia TVs and Walkman portable players, said an area that did well was game software sales for the PlayStation 4 video game console.

Results were hurt by the Kumamoto earthquake in April, which stopped the development and manufacturing of camera parts, resulted in repair costs, damages and other expenses, it said.