Wall Street has been stunned by the news that electronics megapower Sony has made a loss this financial quarter.

Just yesterday (14 May), we reported that Sony Corp. had seen its annual net profit nearly triple to hit a record high.

While the gaming division continued to make a loss, sales of digital cameras and laptops had massively buoyed the company.

But the first 3 months of this year are not boding quite so well.

The company suffered an operating loss of 4.7 billion yen ($45 million) in January through to March.

While this was actually an improvement from a 113 billion yen loss for the same period last year, it was still below the expectations of analysts.

However, Sony insists the year ahead will be a good one and is hoping to be able to drive its gaming division into profit, by cutting manufacturing costs and expanding sales of the PS3.

It will also put a new business strategy into place in June but has already been cutting down its workforce and "shedding non-core assets".

Sony is predicting that its operating profit to rise 20% to 450 billion yen in the year to March 2009, beating the previous market consensus of 428.5 billion.

>> News - Sony profits triple to record high
>> Via - Reuters