The Hindu Business Line : Sony looking at doubling revenues from India

New Delhi April 27 Consumer electronics major Sony said that it was planning to double its consolidated revenues from its operations in India to $2 billion by 2009-10.

"We crossed the $1 billion consolidated revenues mark in 2006-07, and anticipate to nearly double our top-line in India by 2010 to touch the $2-billion mark," said Mr Masaru Tamagawa, Managing Director, Sony India Pvt Ltd.

He added that the revenue figure for 06-07 included revenues from its mobile manufacturing and marketing joint venture Sony Ericsson and consumer electronics division Sony India.

"The consumer electronics division, Sony India, closed the previous fiscal at Rs 2,300 crore and we are anticipating a 30 per cent increase in our revenues from this division on a year-on-year basis."

Mr Tamagawa said that the company is consolidating its operations in the country and is also studying the feasibility of setting up a manufacturing facility here.

"We are exploring the options of a local production base if it suits our strategy but nothing has been finalised as yet," he said.

The company's mobile phone joint venture Sony Ericsson operates out of a three million units per annum manufacturing facility in Chennai, while it has no manufacturing operations for its remaining products sold in the Indian market such as high definition and plasma TVs, DVD players, mobile phones and gaming consoles amongst others.

The company has a 15 per cent market share in the consumer electronics market in India, Mr Tamagawa said.

Playstation 3

Meanwhile, Sony India launched the high definition version of its gaming console Playstation 3 (PS3), priced at Rs 39,990, in an effort to maintain its leadership position in the $32 billion global gaming market.

The company is aiming to sell around 10,000 units of the PS3 in the current fiscal (2007-08) and looking to retain the lead in the $45 million domestic gaming market as well.

Gaming market

"The Indian gaming market, which includes computer games, mobile phone games and consoles, is expected to grow to $425 million by 2009-10 from the current $45 million (including grey market)," said Mr Tamagawa.

Sony has initially shipped 1,200 units of the console for sale in India.

The company plans to sell half of its new consoles through its own outlets `Sony World,' while the remaining half would be sold through retail chains and music stores. Microsoft and Nintendo are its main competitors in the gaming business.

Mr Tim Stokes, Sales and Marketing Manager, Distributors Markets, Sony Computer Entertainment Europe said, "We are targeting an over five-fold jump in the gaming business in India, which would primarily be driven by earlier versions of our console — PS2 and the portable version PSP."

The company has also slashed the prices of the earlier versions of its gaming consoles. It would now sell PS2 for Rs 7,990 while the portable PSP would be sold for Rs 9,990. "We have slashed the prices primarily to tackle the grey market, which stands at approximately 70 per cent of the total market for such consoles. The company has also decided to absorb the duty burden itself so that customers can get easy access to genuine products at a cheaper price," said Mr Stokes.

Sony has already sold three million units of PS3 across North America, Japan and Europe since its launch five months ago and is also looking at developing localised games for the Indian market, which is expected to hit stands by September 2007.

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