Beleaguered Sony to close two-thirds of its US retail stores

Sony Corp's electronic unit said on Wednesday it is closing 20 retail stores in the United States and cutting 1,000 jobs, as the TV and game console maker tries to stem losses and regain market share.

Sony has a total of 31 retail stores in the U.S.

The job cuts are part of a previously announced reduction of 5,000 positions globally, or just over 3 percent of its staff, and fall under a much larger reorganisation that includes spinning off Sony's TV operations and putting its personal computer division on the block.

"While these moves were extremely tough, they were absolutely necessary to position us in the best possible place for future growth," Mike Fasulo, president and chief operating officer of Sony Electronics, said in a statement.

Known for its Bravia TV and Playstation game system, the Japanese company is struggling to compete against Apple and Samsung Electronics that dominate the smartphone, computer and gadget market.

Having last turned an annual operating profit in the 12 months ended March 2004, Sony's TV business piled up losses of 761.9 billion yen in the nine fiscal years before the current one. Sony officials said earlier this month they expect to lose another 25 billion yen on TVs this year.

Buoyed by a strong performance in its financial services unit in the October-December quarter, Sony posted an operating profit for the three months of 90.3 billion, up from 46.43 billion yen a year earlier. That was above a consensus forecasts of 71.9 billion yen, the average of estimates from six analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters.

But with core businesses like its smartphone, PCs, TVs and audio operations weaker than it expected through the first nine months of the fiscal year, Sony slashed its full-year operating profit forecast to 80 billion yen from the 170 billion yen it previously expected.

© Thomson Reuters 2014