Sony Corp. released its financial results for Q3 2015 on Friday. Buoyed by the growth of its PlayStation business, the Japanese company exceeded analyst estimates and posted a net income of ¥120.1 billion (equivalent to $1 billion).

The net income easily surpassed the expectations of Bloomberg's forecast, which was ¥91.1 billion (an average from the compilation of four projections).

According to The Wall Street Journal, the analysts predicted that the company's revenue would slide to ¥2.52 trillion in Q3 2015 when compared to Q3 2014. By comparison in the same period in 2014, Sony Corp. reported a revenue of ¥2.57 trillion.

The FactSet poll - which took into consideration estimations from 20 analysts - also expected that the company would generate an earnings profit of ¥176.1 billion (equal to $1.49 billion) for Q3 2015. This was a slide from the profit of ¥182.1 billion in Q3 2014.

Sony's Q3 2015 net income of ¥120.1 billion was on total revenue generation of ¥2580.8 billion (equivalent to $21.5 billion). Both these figures show a year-on-year increase of 33.5 percent and 0.5 percent, respectively.

The Japanese company's operating income amounted to ¥202.1 billion (which is equivalent to $1.7 billion). This is an 11 percent increase when compared to Q3 2014, beating the average forecast of eight analysts (per Thomson Reuters data) of ¥175 billion.

Thanks to PlayStation business sales, the company surpassed market expectations. Strong sales for the company's PlayStation 4 games and image sensors deployed in smartphones, along with other cost-cutting strategies aided Sony Corp. in bringing about a change of fortune.

Sony's Game and Network Services (G&NS) saw an increase in operating income - ¥12.6 billion yoy to ¥40.2 billion.

"This increase was primarily due to the increase in PS4 software sales as well as the absence in the current quarter of an 11.2 billion yen write-down of PS Vita and PS TV components recorded in the same quarter of the previous fiscal year," reported the company.

The sales for G&NS also saw an increase of 10.5 percent year-on-year to ¥587.1 billion yen (equal to $4,892 million). The increase was largely due to the rise in sales of PS4 software and PS4 hardware units, the company claimed to be "partially offset by a decrease in PlayStation3 software and hardware sales."

However, Sony did not fare too well in the smartphone and TV business segments, and is now lagging behind Samsung, Apple, and Asian OEMs who offer low-cost products.

Photo: Fe Ilya | Flickr