The company has set out a new plan and already executes it

Jul 6, 2015 22:23 GMT  ·  By

Sony Mobile's CEO and President, Hiroki Totoki recently offered a very interesting interview that sheds light on the company's future plans in the smartphone business.

In the interview offered to Arabian Business, Totoki dismisses the rumors about Sony potentially selling its mobile division and explains why he thinks they emerged in the first place.

“The speculations arose because in 2014 we made a huge loss as a mobile business. It mainly came from the write-off of the goodwill of our impairment asset.

When we bought back Ericsson’s share [in 2012], we bought back 100 percent of it. And obviously that price was high. We had to write it down and it made a substantial loss for the company.”

Totoki went on and said that the company's cash flow wasn't affected at all and that Sony Mobile's “cash flow is very healthy.” The culprit in this case is the accounting loss after Ericsson's acquisition, which was so huge that people have started to talk about Sony possibly exiting the smartphone business.

“Before that rumour, we exited the VAIO business, which was the PC business. That led people to think that Sony would exit the smartphone business, as well. But the smartphone business is very different from PCs,” said Totoki.

Sony's smartphone business has a lot of potential

According to Sony Mobile's CEO, the smartphones are a different breed in the fact that they connect people with other people, but also with other devices.

There's huge ground for innovation and diversification here, which is why Sony will never exit the smartphone business, instead it will focus on bringing new technologies that will differentiate its products.

“We’re heading to the IoT (Internet of Things) era and have to produce a number of new categories of products in this world, otherwise we could lose out on a very important business domain. In that sense we will never ever sell or exit from the current mobile business,” concluded Totoki.

So there you have it folks. Sony fans should rest easy, as the Japanese company has no intention whatsoever to sell its mobile division like Nokia did.