Sony To Lay Off 10,000 Employees

Sites include Sony.com . Published on April 24th, 2012. Written by Anthony West.

Yahoo is shedding a few thousand jobs at least and now another big tech company is looking to do the same. The tech giant is looking to cut a whopping 10,000 jobs or 6% of its global workforce.

The cuts will occur mainly in the chemicals and small and midsize LCD operations but Sony is tight-lipped about the geography of those cuts. A large chunk of its employees are based in Japan, and many are wondering if these employees will be the first to face the axe.

Sony has been struggling of late with meeting projection targets and this has helped fuel speculation that the company might be losing ground to competitors. There was even a recent shakeup at the top with former executive deputy president Kazuo Hirai replacing Howard Stringer as president and CEO.

This news of course will affect sentiments on Wall Street; Sony is after all one of the tried and tested tech companies and when it starts to falter, there are bound to be more to follow. Or this could be seen as an anomaly; after all, Apple just announced record profits. Sure Sony and Apple aren’t direct competitors, but the two operate in the same sort of environment.

Whatever the case, 10,000 people will now be added to the long list of layoffs that despite talk of a recovering world economy, seem unaffected.