Sony adopts robotics to reduce costs and increase digital services

Sony predicts that robots will take their manufacturing lines from TVs, smartphones and cameras as the entertainment conglomerate heads to services to boost sales of consumer electronics.

Kimio Maki, head of Sony’s e-business, said accelerating factory automation would be combined with a greater focus on online sales and data analysis to reduce manufacturing costs. He added that it would also help reduce product defects.

“I do not think that automation with robots only brings enough merit. The key is to use digitization to link both sales and manufacturing, ”Maki said in an interview with the Financial Times.

He said the installation of unmanned production lines was expected to reduce costs by 70% at Sony’s main TV factory in Malaysia for fiscal year 2023, compared to 2018. The group also has ambitions to use robotics in the manufacture of smartphones and cameras in the future, although it will keep some factory workers.

In terms of marketing, sales data will be analyzed using artificial intelligence to more effectively establish manufacturing volume.

The pull of digitization for cost efficiency is Sony’s strategy consumer electronics has pivoted. The group has suffered television losses that spanned more than a decade and maintained its financial performance switching to lower volume but high-end products.

Far from selling only hardware such as Bravia TVs and Xperia smartphones, Maki is tasked with delivering compelling services that will keep consumers interested and coming back, generating recurring revenue.

While Maki said the company would continue to sell hardware and services to consumers, a significant portion of its growth goal would come from products for professional use, such as LED glass displays for virtual video production and tracking technology. of balls for the sports entertainment industry. In the long run, Sony also wants to focus on the entertainment space for cars.

The change has also improved the profitability of Sony’s e-medical and medical businesses, with an operating profit margin of 7.2% in the fiscal year ending March compared to 3.3% in the fiscal year. 2018. Maki has told investors he wanted to raise that figure to 10 percent.

Critics have long pointed to Sony’s weakness in digital services and platforms as one of the main reasons why the Walkman maker lost the battles against Apple’s iPod i Amazon Kindle, despite having a rich entertainment portfolio covering games, music, movies and animation.

Another challenge has been the hierarchy of Sony siled structure, which has hampered the cooperation of divisions of the conglomerate in an ecosystem that integrates several products.

But that changed, Maki argued, as Sony split its electronics business into an independent subsidiary and merged audio, television, mobile phone, camera and medical services companies into a single organization in April.

“By being brought together under a single entity and government structure, we are now able to cooperate organically to create something new. This applies not only to product manufacturing, but also to purchasing, manufacturing, product development and sales, ”he said.