As a short follow-up on iRiver's figures (item below), here's a heads-up on Sony's situation (yeah - these are 1-day old statistics, shame on us etc.).

Net profit for Q3 (fiscal quarter, ended September 30): 28.500.000.000 Yen ($ 247 million USD or 205 million Euro), down by 47%.

Sales: equal to Q3 of last year, at 1.7 trillion (cool) Japanese Yen. That's $ 14.74 billion Dollar.

Interesting fact: "Sony would have reported a loss were it not for a one-time gain equivalent to $ 637 million" (quoted: Nobuyuki Oneda, chief financial officer) - this gain was a result from the transfer of part of the company's employee pension plan to the government.

According to the same guy, the electronics section would have produced a $ 390 to $ 434 million Dollar loss without said pension transfer. It seems that on an annual base, Sony will end up in the red figures for the first time in more than a decade, though.

Where does the DAP-stuff fit in: "The company attributed much of its lackluster performance last quarter to declining sales of plasma TV sets, digital cameras and the Walkman, which competes with iPod."

The next two quarters will probably prove very, very vital to Sony's position within the DAP business. Their new NW-A1x000/3000 series is set for an early November launch - remember, they want to sell about 5 times as many of these things compared to the "old" Walkman series sale statistics.

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