Sony mobile is losing more than gaming division is gaining (which is a lot of money)

Sony just posted its quarterly earnings report, summarizing the company’s gains and losses for the second fiscal quarter of 2018. The report paints a bright picture for its gaming division, which of course includes all things PlayStation. Sony Gaming had a year-over-year increase of about $317 million.

However, the report paints a bleak picture indeed for its struggling mobile division.

In fiscal Q2 2018, Sony’s mobile division lost over $480 million as compared to fiscal Q2 of the previous year. While that’s an alarmingly-high number, the division running at a loss is not that surprising: the previous quarter saw the company losing almost $100 million in the same division.

To make matters worse, Sony as a whole is actually doing fairly well: the Japanese company made over $1 billion more in the first half of fiscal 2018 than it did in the first half of fiscal 2017.

In other words, Sony’s mobile division is acting a bit like dead weight.

While Sony Mobile isn’t likely to be shut down any time soon, the company can only sustain supporting the division at losses like this for so long before it will have to make some hard decisions. After all, even though making over $1 billion more in a quarter as compared to the prior year is good news, it’s not nearly as good when you find out half of it will go to keep a struggling division afloat.

What exactly is Sony doing wrong? Our own Jimmy Westenberg has some theories, but it ultimately comes down to one thing: most general consumers don’t even know Sony makes smartphones. That’s absolutely the company’s biggest issue when it comes to mobile.

You can click here to read the full earnings report.

NEXT: First Sony, now Samsung — expect 2019 to be the year of 48-megapixel camera