Sony loses £4bn as TV business struggles

It's never nice losing money -- just this weekend I took thirty quid out of the cash machine and I've no idea where it's gone. So I know exactly how Sony feels, having lost a rather unfortunate £4bn in the past year.

Reuters reports the giant debit is double what was predicted, and marks a fourth year of making a loss for the Japanese giant. Most of this year's loss is down to a big tax bill.

Sadly, Sony plans to cut 10,000 jobs -- 6 per cent of the company's workforce. Executives are also likely to return their bonuses.

Sony is planning to put its house in order by kicking things up a notch in growth areas such as mobile phones, gaming and cameras and camcorders.

Sony should be in a good position to make serious money from entertainment: it not only makes the TVs and Blu-rays players we watch movies on, it also makes the movies themselves. But demand for Sony's Bravia televisions is struggling, so the company has to reverse losses in the TV market.

Sony's broad range of disciplines are an advantage for the Xperia line of phones. Telly tech from the Bravia line of TVs goes into an Xperia phone's display, and camera craft from the Cyber-shot line of cameras goes into the phone's snappers. Sony is renewing its focus on phones this year with the likes of the admirable Sony Xperia S after buying out former phone partner Ericsson.

It could start by cracking on with the Ice Cream Sandwich update for Xperia phones -- the Sony Xperia Neo L is the first to offer ICS -- instead of trying to convince us Gingerbread is fine.

Another potential boost for the company is the planned next-generation PlayStation games console, rumoured to be called Orbis and set for release by Christmas next year.

Tell us your thoughts in the comments or on our Facebook page.