Pioneer Shutting TV Ops; Cutting 10,000 Jobs

The carnage in the Japanese consumer electronics industry rolls on. This morning, Pioneer Corp. (PNCOF.PK) announced that it will cut 10,000 jobs and close its TV operations. The company said it now expects a loss for the March 2009 fiscal year of 130 billion yen, or $1.44 billion, far worse than its previous estimated loss of 78 billion yen. Pioneer said it will withdraw form the TV business by March 2010 and cut 16% of its full time staff plus another 4,000 temporary workers, Bloomberg reports. The company expects FY ‘09 sales to be down 28%. This will be the company’s fifth straight money losing year. Pioneer is closing a plasma TV factory in the U.K. this month, and another in the U.S. in April. The bad news from Pioneer follows a similar series of announcements from other Japanese electronics companies: there have been earnings warnings from Sharp , Panasonic , NEC , Hitachi and Sony .  The six companies together together have now announced just under 70,000 ... (link)