Sony will improve profit margins, claims CEO

AFTER A YEAR from hell last year, electronics giant Sony is on track to make a killing in 2007, according to its CEO Howard Stringer.

Speaking to a bunch of assembled hacks at the International Consumer Electronics Show yesterday, Stringer said he still needs to assess with other top executives how various Sony divisions will help steer the battered behemoth back to health.

However he thinks he can still meet his target of reaching an operating profit margin of five percent for the fiscal year ending in March 2008.

Sony's profits plummeted by 94 percent for its third quarter, due largely to a global recall of exploding batteries and losses on the PS3 debacle.

With true Celtic optimism, Stringer said he had a few ideas about where he could find the extra cash, but he "could be wrong". We sometimes find that there is a fiver or two in one of the coats in the back of the closet too.

Stringer added that US sales of the Sony Reader, an electronic book reader, are also doing better than the company expected, and a new Reader model, adding wireless capability, will likely appear within the year.

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