Panasonic has suffered a decline in mobile phone sales as it issued a profit warning and forecast a full year loss of £6.79bn.
The manufacturer was the latest to reveal a gloomy set of financial figures during the past few weeks. For its digital AVC networks division, which includes its mobile phone sales, revenue was ¥2,182.9bn (£18.08bn), down 18.4%, for the nine months to 31 December 2011. The division made a ¥32.7bn loss (£270.8m), down sharply from a ¥101.2bn profit in 2010 (£838.0m). It blamed this slump on the sales decline of mobile phones and flatscreen televisions.
Group sales were down 10% to ¥5,965.4bn (£49.4bn) across the entire business during the nine month period. It had a net loss of ¥333.8bn (£2.76bn), from net income of ¥114.7bn (£949.8m) in 2010. It blamed the Japanese earthquake, Thailand floods and a decline in the value of the Yen for the drop in profit.
Third quarter sales were down 14% to ¥1,960.2bn (£16.23bn). It made a net loss of ¥197.6bn (£1.64bn), compared to an operating profit of ¥40.0bn (£331.2m) in 2010. The company revised its forecast for the 2012 financial year because of the global economic downturn, instability in the financial markets because of the European debt crisis and disruption to the supply chain because of the floods in Thailand in October. It predicted a net loss of ¥780.0bn (£6.79bn), a deterioration from the previous forecast of a ¥420.0bn (£3.47bn) loss.