Panasonic, who six months ago reported over $5 Billion in losses, has reported a profit for the first time in 12 months. Arch competitor Sony us still bleeding losses.
.While sales dropped 20% to $1 Billion the Australia operation is booming with increased sales of plasma TV’s digital cameras and camcorders and healthy growth in their PRO AV operation that sells commercial plasma panels.
The Company who like Sony and Samsung have been battered by the global economic slump and fierce competition, reported a US$67 million profit from sales of $19.1 Billion, for the July-September quarter, this was down 90 percent from the previous year.
Samsung reported a US$3.5 Billion dollar profit and Sony a $1.1 Billion loss.
Demand for Panasonic plasma TV’s and Lumix helped, said company spokeswoman Kyoko Ishii.
Also helping was increased sales appliances and TV’s in Japan, and growing demand for washing machines in China – a key market for appliances, she said. Quarterly sales dropped 20 percent to 1.7 trillion yen ($19 billion) from the previous year.
The Japanese electronics maker was hit by sluggish sales in semiconductors and electronics parts, as well as digital audio equipment, communications equipment and notebook computers. Overseas demand for digital cameras and flat-panel TVs remained weak with the exception of Australia, where Panasonic has increased their share of the digital camera and camcorder market during the quarter.
Despite the quarterly profit Panasonic is still expecting to finish the year with losses of 1.5 billion due to first quarter losses of over $5Billion.