:00:03. > :00:13.left by his deceased father. Those are the headlines. Now for
:00:13. > :00:17.
:00:17. > :00:22.the latest financial news it is time for it World Business Report.
:00:22. > :00:26.Sony prepares to axe thousands of jobs as it posted a record annual
:00:26. > :00:36.loss. Google looks set to profit from
:00:36. > :00:39.
:00:39. > :00:46.sales of online advertising and the android phone.
:00:46. > :00:50.It's all eyes on Sony today because these CEO says that he is prepared
:00:50. > :00:54.to take painful steps to revive the company. He will lay out his
:00:55. > :00:58.revival strategy in more detail at a briefing in the next few hours.
:00:58. > :01:03.The Sony veteran, known for his aggressive cost cutting, has
:01:03. > :01:07.promised to get the struggling television business, which has lost
:01:07. > :01:11.$10 billion in ten years, back on its feet in two years.
:01:11. > :01:15.Sony has lost money in each of the past four years. It has been
:01:15. > :01:18.hammered by weak demand for televisions and it hurt by a strong
:01:18. > :01:23.currency and slowing consumer demand. It is not delivering what
:01:23. > :01:27.the customer wants and is losing ground to increasing competition.
:01:27. > :01:32.Sony has suffered, simply because it failed to deliver must-have
:01:32. > :01:41.products. It is not alone. Once upon a time the Japanese TV
:01:41. > :01:48.industry dominated the market. Now, Sony, Panasonic and Sharp have all
:01:48. > :01:52.been cornered by innovative rivals such as Apple and Samsung.
:01:52. > :01:56.There is also a performance gap with Sony's foreign rivals, he'd
:01:56. > :02:02.been more pressure on its chief executive to turn around the
:02:02. > :02:08.electronics giant -- he'd been more pressure. Apple more or less
:02:08. > :02:16.reinvented the game with innovative designs. Design has become a
:02:16. > :02:23.critical part of what consumers love. What Sony can do remains to
:02:23. > :02:27.be seen. Sony's stocks have almost halved in the last year. The CEO
:02:27. > :02:37.insists there will be no hesitation in scaling back or withdrawing from
:02:37. > :02:42.businesses deemed uncompetitive. Let's get more on this story. A lot
:02:42. > :02:47.of speculation about what exactly is going to be said in the next few
:02:47. > :02:51.hours. Looking at the potential job losses, it is going to be
:02:51. > :03:00.devastating news for an awful lot of people.
:03:00. > :03:06.It has been reported here in Japan that one thing that will be axed is
:03:06. > :03:10.a division in the chemical department of Sony. The scale of
:03:10. > :03:15.this challenge is pretty huge. In the last financial year, they made
:03:15. > :03:19.a record loss of $6.4 billion. What can he do to turn that around? One
:03:19. > :03:26.potential possibility, thinking outside the Square, is that he
:03:26. > :03:30.could do some kind of alliance with Panasonic and sharp. Perhaps with
:03:30. > :03:39.the backing of the Japanese taxpayer. There is a precedent for
:03:39. > :03:49.that, because in small-screen televisions... Sony has caught up
:03:49. > :03:49.
:03:49. > :03:53.with Hitachi -- link up. Another thing he could do is to put more
:03:54. > :03:57.flesh on the idea of networking. That is That is the future - are putting
:03:57. > :04:01.together its games, telephones, televisions, making them all work
:04:01. > :04:07.together. I think people will want to see more details about how that
:04:07. > :04:12.will be done. It is not just Sony that has been
:04:12. > :04:18.suffering - Panasonic and Sharp as well. It is very strong competition
:04:18. > :04:22.from Apple and Samsung. That is a fundamental problem. One
:04:22. > :04:26.analyst here has been quoted as saying that it is as bad as the
:04:26. > :04:34.Japanese consumer electronics industry facing defeat. The problem
:04:34. > :04:38.is that they have been out- innovated by Apple. They are all
:04:38. > :04:42.about design. Someone else is making the products, where Japanese
:04:42. > :04:45.companies are hugging their manufacturing tight. On the other
:04:45. > :04:49.side they are being overtaken by the likes of Samsung. Because they
:04:49. > :04:53.are not facing the very high Japanese yen, they can make things
:04:53. > :04:57.more cheaply. That is the challenge that Sony and those other companies
:04:57. > :05:00.face. Google is one of the world's most
:05:00. > :05:06.important companies because it has been the main gateway to the
:05:06. > :05:09.internet. That is changing with the switch to mobile devices. It is a
:05:09. > :05:16.huge question for Google. It has suffered a worrying drop in
:05:16. > :05:22.advertising revenue from the end of last year as a result of that move
:05:22. > :05:26.to mobile. Their results, coming soon, will be closely watched.
:05:26. > :05:33.Most of us used Google. Not many of for us, it seems, are using this -
:05:33. > :05:37.Google+. It is the company's recently been to social networking.
:05:37. > :05:43.Though it has attracted more than 100 million users since last summer,
:05:43. > :05:48.it is still dwarfed by its more popular competitor. Facebook is my
:05:48. > :05:54.life right now. I don't know. don't use Google+. I tried it once
:05:54. > :05:59.but it is not user-friendly, not as friendly as Facebook. I have tried
:05:59. > :06:07.it once. It's not popular. At least not for me, I don't know, where I
:06:07. > :06:12.am from, everyone is, like, Facebook. Last year, users spend
:06:12. > :06:16.more than seven hours a month on the site. Google+ users were there
:06:16. > :06:21.for barely a few minutes. Google says it is early days and Google+
:06:21. > :06:31.should be seen less as a rival to Facebook than as an added feature
:06:31. > :06:33.
:06:34. > :06:39.alongside GE male. -- at their e- mail. At the end of last year,
:06:39. > :06:42.advertising revenue to be hit as users spend less time on laptops
:06:42. > :06:52.and personal computers, which generate a more expensive to
:06:52. > :06:53.
:06:53. > :07:00.Abbottabad. I think there are a lot of challenges facing the company --
:07:00. > :07:06.expensive type of advertising. The economics are quite different - I
:07:06. > :07:11.think that is critically important for this company. On the other hand,
:07:11. > :07:15.Google has done very well with android personal devices, which now
:07:15. > :07:20.make up half of the world's smartphone market. It faces many
:07:20. > :07:30.rivals - not just Facebook but others on and Apple as well, which
:07:30. > :07:41.
:07:41. > :07:44.are all breaking new ground. -- but it appears on.
:07:44. > :07:49.Competition from Tablet computers has squeezed demand for home
:07:49. > :07:55.computers. Most of this rise was due to firms upgrading office
:07:55. > :08:05.equipment. HP remains the biggest producer, but live nova has taken a
:08:05. > :08:12.
:08:12. > :08:16.lot of market share to become the world's number two. -- Lenovo.
:08:16. > :08:19.Household in comes our starting to rise again, and there is cautious
:08:19. > :08:22.optimism in the manufacturing sector. There are warnings that
:08:22. > :08:27.rising fuel costs are limiting spending and becoming a major
:08:27. > :08:30.concern for most companies. Increasing fuel costs have pushed
:08:30. > :08:38.Bangladesh to the point of crisis. On Wednesday the International
:08:38. > :08:47.Monetary Fund agreed loans of nearly $1 billion. This will allow
:08:47. > :08:51.millions of Bangladeshi people access to fuel.... Paying more for
:08:51. > :08:55.imported goods also drained the country's foreign currency reserves,
:08:55. > :08:59.making it harder for Bangladesh to pay its bills.
:08:59. > :09:05.Another government in debt - Italy hopes to raise 5 billion euros to
:09:05. > :09:09.we finance its March deficit today. It raised 11 billion on Wednesday
:09:09. > :09:12.but much higher borrowing costs are expected this year. Investors fear
:09:12. > :09:19.that Italy, Spain and other eurozone economies will not be able
:09:19. > :09:22.to grow fast enough to repay their large debts.
:09:22. > :09:27.Let's bring you up to date with what has been happening on the
:09:27. > :09:34.Asian markets. It is a better story to tell you. Bearing in mind that
:09:34. > :09:40.the Nikkei had slipped quite substantially - in fact, this year
:09:40. > :09:43.- this month, I should say, it lost 6% of its value only halfway