Sony Mobile Headquarters Retreats to Japan

It hasn't been what anyone would call a great last couple years for Sony, and the beleaguered electronics firm is finding itself backpedaling further with a move announced late last night to move the Sony Mobile headquarters from Lund in Sweden to Tokyo.

The move will represent the loss of about 1,000 jobs, or around 15 percent of Sony Mobile's entire workforce (described as a mix of 650 full-time employees and the rest being consultants), as Sony looks to rebuild its shattered fortunes in the wake of protracted losses.

Sony's plan was to get the mobile group back to Tokyo, according to CEO Kunimasa Suzuki, to speed up the process of "integration and convergence with the wider Sony group", as well as "reduce costs, enhance time-to-market efficiency and bring the business back to a place of strength." Interestingly, the changing of the flags from Lund to Tokyo doesn't mean that Lund is closed down, but rather, that Lund's focus will now be on development in software and applications alike.

Indeed, Sony needed desperately to do something--anything, really--to stem the massive losses being represented by the company's last few balance sheet reports. Job cuts, sadly, had to be part of the picture, but it's clear Sony's not just slashing payroll and hoping everything else works out. Reducing time-to-market will get Sony's innovations out of the labs and onto the shelves faster, a development that will no doubt be welcome for stockholders as well as the company itself.

With so much competition currently engaged in all of Sony's applicable markets, its plain that Sony needs to get big new products out the door sooner. Making the Lund office focus on software and applications, meanwhile, is also a smart move as so much of the mobile market depends on software and applications. Sony getting plenty of skin in that particular game sounds like a fine way to turn a profit, assuming the quality is there.

If there's one thing that Sony needs right now, and in spades, its profit vectors. Sony needs income and it needs it in rapid fashion to help make up for the crippling losses it took not so long ago. But with Sony busily working to affect a comeback, about the only thing that should stand between them and its mission is the ailing economy, which it has only limited control over in the first place. Sony has the skills and tools to stage a comeback; only time will tell if it can pull it off.

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