Sony embraces robotics to cut costs and boost digital services

Sony predicts robots will take over its TV, smartphone and camera manufacturing lines as the entertainment conglomerate shifts its focus to services to boost sales of consumer electronics.

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

“I don’t think automation alone using robots will bring 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 is expected to reduce costs by 70% at Sony’s main TV plant in Malaysia by fiscal year 2023, compared to 2018. The group also has the ambition to use robotics in the manufacture of smartphones and cameras in the future, although it will maintain a few factory workers.

On the marketing side, sales data will be analyzed using artificial intelligence to better define the volume of production.

Digitization’s push for profitability comes as Sony’s consumer electronics strategy has shifted. The group stemmed from television losses that lasted for more than a decade and stabilized its financial performance by switching to smaller but more premium products.

Far from simply selling hardware like Bravia TVs and Xperia smartphones, Maki is tasked with delivering compelling services that will keep consumers interested and come back, generating recurring revenue.

While Maki said the company will continue to sell hardware and services to consumers, a significant part of its growth target will come from products for professional use, such as liquid crystal displays for virtual video production and technology. ball tracking for the sports entertainment industry. In the long term, Sony also wants to target the entertainment space for cars.

The change also improved the profitability of Sony’s electronics and medical businesses, with their operating profit margin reaching 7.2% in the fiscal year ended March, from 3.3% in fiscal 2018. Maki 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 the Walkman maker lost the battles against Apple’s iPod and Amazon’s Kindle, despite a wealthy entertainment portfolio including games, music, movies and animation.

Another challenge has been Sony’s hierarchical and siled structure, which made it difficult for the conglomerate’s divisions to cooperate on an ecosystem that integrates diverse products.

But that was changing, Maki argued, since Sony split its electronics business into a separate subsidiary and merged audio, TV, cellphones, cameras and medical businesses into one organization in April.

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