Sony Corp Chief Executive Offer Kazuo Hirai is seeking to cure a TV business that has lost $7.8 billion over a decade by isolating it to speed up decisions on future strategy.Hirai is spinning off TV operations into a separate business in the latest attempt to fix a division that he says for now remains central to the Japanese electronics maker. It's part of a broader restructuring: Sony also confirmed on Thursday it will sell its Vaio personal computer division, effectively ending 17 years in that business.Sony said charges associated with the moves will combine with weaker showings than it expected in mobile phones, TVs and PCs to pitch it into a net loss this fiscal year of 110 billion yen ($1.1 billion). The maker of Bravia TVs and Playstation game consoles will cut 5,000 jobs - just over 3 percent of its global staff - as a result of the shakeup, counting on saving 100 billion yen in annual fixed costs.Two years into the job, Hirai's gambit comes as Japan's electronics firms struggle to compete with deep-pocketed industry giants like Apple Inc and Samsung Electronics Co that dominate sales consumer gadgets like smartphone and tablet computers. Local peers Panasonic Corp and Sharp Corp are ahead of Sony on restructuring - the Vaio sale marks the first time Hirai has pulled a major consumer product line.
Apple Inc. (Apple) designs, manufactures and markets mobile communication and media devices, personal computers, and portable digital music players, and a variety of related software, services, peripherals, networking solutions, and third-party digital content and applications. Shares of AAPL traded higher by 0.75% or $3.8/share to $512.59. In the past year, the shares have traded as low as $385.10 and as high as $575.14. On average, 12320000 shares of AAPL exchange hands on a given day and today's volume is recorded at 11786258.
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