Sony Reports a Jump in Fiscal Third Quarter Profit on PS4

Annual Forecasts Sony generated 202.1 billion yen of operating income on 2.58 trillion yen in sales in the third quarter.

Sony’s smartphone business brought in $3.2 billion in sales, and made the company $201 million in profit.

The Japanese multinational conglomerate headquartered in Tokyo said that in part brisk sales of its PlayStation 4 games helped compensate for a downturn in sales of its image sensors, a key sector responsible for the bluechip’s turnaround a year earlier.

Sony has announced its financial results for the period spanning October to December previous year, revealing the company shipped 8.4 million PlayStation 4 consoles during this period. That was more than the 91.1 billion yen average of four estimates compiled by Bloomberg. The company just reported its earnings for its latest quarter, and things aren’t looking as rosy as they were before: Sony reports a “significant” decrease in image sensor sales. Sony put these changes down to a previous write-down of PS Vita and PS TV components, and an increase in PlayStation 4 sales.

Revenues also decreased for several other Sony’s other divisions, including imaging and home entertainment, although these divisions managed to record increases in profit.

Sony’s (NYSE:SNE) fiscal third-quarter net profit jumped 33.5% to ¥120.1 from a year earlier, heavily beating analyst expectations. 7 billion as image-sensor sales were hurt by the weakness in global demand for smartphones and the unit’s research-and-development efforts. However, Sony is yet another large electronics company struggling to eke out profits from the competitive smartphone market.