Sony Mobile is set to lose 15% of its workforce, the company announced today. Over 1,000 job losses are expected, with 650 coming from workers at the Lund plant in Sweden.
Lund was previously the headquarters of Sony Mobile, but now the team are restructuring their business to have a new headquarters in Tokyo. Despite the huge loss of workforce, the arm’s CEO Kunimasa Suzuki stressed that it was a core focus for Sony as a whole:
Sony has identified the mobile business as one of its core businesses and the Xperia smartphone portfolio continues to gain momentum with customers and consumers worldwide. We are accelerating the integration and convergence with the wider Sony group to continue enhancing our offerings, and a more focused and efficient operational structure will help to reduce Sony Mobile’s costs, enhance time to market efficiency and bring the business back to a place of strength.
According to research firm Strategy Analytics, Sony had about 4% of the global market for smartphones in the first quarter of 2012, compared with around 31% for Samsung and 24% for Apple.
The success of Sony Mobile not only affects PlayStation because of the fact that the richer the company is, the more risks they can take, but Sony is preparing to release PlayStation Mobile this fall, a game service available on Sony mobiles and several other manufacturers.
