Sony’s quarterly loss balloons on mobile woes

Pic: AP.

Pic: AP.

TOKYO (AP) — Sony Corp. says losses for July-September ballooned to 136 billion yen ($1.2 billion) as the Japanese electronics and entertainment company’s troubled mobile phone division reported huge red ink.

The Tokyo-based maker of the PlayStation 4 video game machines, Spider-Man movies and Xperia smartphones had reported a 19.6 billion yen loss for the same period a year earlier.

The results Friday came despite a 7 percent increase in quarterly sales to 1.9 trillion yen ($17.3 billion) as performance improved in cameras, TVs and game businesses.

Sony stuck to its forecast for the year through March 2015 at a 230 billion yen ($2.1 billion) loss.

Sony is struggling amid intense competition from Apple Inc. of the U.S., Samsung Electronics Co. of South Korea and a host of other cheaper Asian rivals.