Sony released their first quarter financial report for 2013, revealing that sales grew by 13 per cent to 1.712 trillion JPY, with net profits of 3.48 billion JPY (US$35.38 million); a year on year decline from net profits of 24.64 billion JPY (US$250 million) posted last year.
Games earnings totalled 117.9 billion JPY, a slight decrease year on year. PlayStation 2 and PlayStation 3 sold a combined 1.1 million units during the quarter, a decrease of 2.8 million units from same quarter last year. PSP and PS Vita sold 600,000 units during the quarter, down from last year’s 1.4 million units in first quarter sales.
However, the company reported that retail software earnings grew by 21 million units, with 64 million units sold in the quarter. Sony expects to sell 319 million software units in the 2013 fiscal year, 53 million units more than last year.
Unit sales of smartphones also rose; the company posted mobile products and communications revenues of 389 billion yen, an increase of 36.2 per cent from last year. The company posted an increase in financial services revenue as well, which grew to 252.7 billion JPY, an increase of 29.9 per cent.
Sony expects net profits to reach 50 billion JPY for the 2013 fiscal year, with operating profits to rise slightly to 230 billion JPY on estimated sales of 7.9 trillion JPY.
