It has been a tough year for Sony. After dealing with a string of cyber attacks on almost every sector of its business, it is now looking at disappointing television sales sales that are likely to continue declining through the rest of the year.
Just last week, Sony cut its annual TV sales forecast and also mentioned that its losses on TV's could "widen" this year. In addition, this is Sony's eighth straight year of losses in the TV business.
Over the past few years, the electronics corporation has sold off some of its TV factories in Mexico, Slovakia and Spain, yet continues to keep TV factories in Brazil, China, Japan and Malaysia.
Despite a poor annual sales outlook and the loss of factories, Sony refuses to get rid of its TV business.
"Televisions are a core business for Sony and it would be unthinkable for us to shrink that business," said Kazuo Hirai, executive deputy president of Sony.
A TV panel partnership with Samsung has become a potential option for Sony as well, but at the moment, it doesn't seem entirely interested or disinterested.
"We are absolutely not thinking of abolishing the joint venture, and it's not something that would be easy to do," said Hirai.
Sony's TV business suffers due to increased competition among other low-cost Asian rivals as well as competition with newer technology like tablets and smartphones.
In addition to a poor TV outlook, Reuters mentioned that Sony could also find disappointing results from its PlayStation Vita since Nintendo had to slash the price of its 3DS only four months after releasing it. To be fair, the 3DS didn't fail because people just aren't into portable gaming anymore -- it was because Nintendo had a poor initial game lineup.
