Sony suffered through its worst year ever in 2011, and not just because of the high-profile hacker attacks that compromised millions of user accounts and resulted in extended downtime to the PlayStation Network. The real reason Sony can lament 2011 is because of the fact that it posted a net loss of $5.7 billion, the company’s largest loss ever in its 66-year history, and the fourth straight year of sitting in the red.

If there’s a silver lining to the dark and gloomy cloud, it’s that Sony had previously forecast a loss of $6.5 billion. Overall, however, it was an obviously crummy year for the electronics juggernaut, and not for any single reason. Sony blamed the poor performance on foreign exchange rates, earthquakes and tsunamis in Japan, floods in Thailand, and general “deterioration in market conditions in developed countries.”

According to VentureBeat, Sony CFO Masaru Kato indicated that “This year remains crucial for a recovery in our electronics business. A fifth straight year of losses should never be tolerated.”

Investors reacted negatively to the news with shares of Sony on the Tokyo Stock Exchange sliding 6.43 percent to 1,135 yen, a 38 percent drop from this year’s high of 1,832 yen back in March, and the lowest it’s been in three decades, The Register reports.

The full financial report is available here (PDF).

Image Credit: Flickr (Jami3.org)

Sony’s name is synonymous with leading edge technology and quality consumer electronics, but as the market declines do Sony have what it takes to stay at the top?

Originally founded way back in 1946 Sony quickly became a household name for consumer electronics. Just a quick look at their portfolio of products and inventions would even make Thomas Edison envious. Who could forget such classics as the Walkman, Blu-ray, digital 8 and if your really old, Betamax and quite possibly their crowning jewel the Playstation.

But of late Sony seems to have hit a bad patch posting a loss every year for the last 3 years. The latest financial figures don’t look any better with the latest losses totaling £3.5bn.

Sony themselves have blamed everything from natural disasters and unfavourable exchange rates to conditions in developing countries for this latest poor result.

So what next for Sony? When as any globally struggling company does, it’s about to shed a few pounds from the waist in the form of 10,000 employees. With nothing new planned for the immediate future to stimulate sales and the continued decline in electronic consumer market coupled with so many other brands offering products with better specification, how much longer can Sony continue to suffer annual losses such as these? With the upcoming console rescue their margins?

John Riccitiello, Electronic Arts CEO has caused the shares of Zynga Inc to drop to their lowest level earlier this week after he suggested that Zynga paid too much for a recent takeover deal. This caused analysts to ponder the decision.

Riccitiello was holding a fourth quarter earnings call on Monday which suggested that acquisitions in the social game sector were now too expensive. He didn’t mention Zynga by name, although the analysts were able to read between the lines.

Zynga are the creators of popular Facebook games such as FarmVille and Mafia Wars and they recently paid $180 million to buy OMGPop, who make the very popular mobile game ‘Draw Something’ which managed to knock Angry Birds from the top spot for a while on the App Store.

Riccitiello said on the conference call “Right now, what I’m starting to see is valuation expectations that assume that these things are all hockey sticks moving up and to the right with no end in sight. I think those are bad assumptions.”

The popularity of Draw Something however has declined since April, which reinforced the comments that Riccitiello was making. Zynga’s daily active user base has also declined by a significant 12.5 percent in April.

Zynga share their revenue stream with Facebook when people make purchases playing Zynga games. It is trying hard to generate more revenue from sales on Zynga.com as it doesn’t have to share a percentage of the sale with Facebook.

ABCNews added “Riccitiello said valuing social game companies at 10 or 20 times adjusted earnings requires a belief the growth will last a “very, very long time.” Instead, he said he said one should add up a company’s expected profits over three or four years, expecting that they will rise and then fall, and to discount that value to account for risks.”

Regular readers will be aware that Proview Electronics have been gunning for Apple, entering into legal wrangles in China over the iPad trademark.

Proview won’t be happy as a California judge, Mark Pierce dismissed the lawsuit against Apple which was first filed in February.

Proview had claimed that Apple deceived them when they acquired the iPad trademarks from them in 2009.

The case in China has escalated into one of the biggest intellectual property cases for a foreign company in China. Proview Electronics are a Taiwanese subsidiary of Proview International Holdings and the organisation that Apple acquired the trademarks for the iPad name.

Apple argued that the case against them be dismissed in the U.S. on the grounds that both parties had agreed to settle the legal concerns in Hong Kong.

An Apple spokesperson said that Apple had rightfully purchased the iPad name from Proview saying “Proview refuses to honor their agreement with Apple in China.”

Proview issued a statement via their lawyer Christopher Evans, saying “We are looking forward to presenting the facts in the case to the appellate court, and we are confident that the facts will show that Apple fraudulently obtained the iPad trademarks.”

Are you ready for the second coming of Google’s Internet-enabled TV platform? Well, ready or not, Google TV is once again on the horizon, and this time it will be LG making a big push to promote the platform, not Logitech, which had some harsh words for the service after being burned by weak sales and left holding millions of dollars in unsold inventory. That’s all in the past as far as LG is concerned, and the future starts in mid-May.

“Production of Google TVs will start from May 17 from our factory in Mexico and U.S. consumers will be able to buy the product from the week of May 21,” Ro Seogho, a senior LG executive, recently told a handful of reporters, according to Silicon Valley’s Mercury News.

Google’s first attempt to capture an audience in the living room proved abysmal to the point where the platform had been all but forgotten on the consumer side. Logitech called its participation a “gigantic” mistake, one that cost the company “well over $100 million in operating profits” for what was ultimately a “beta” product, and while Logitech wouldn’t rule out the platform being successful one day, the company said it would be a “grandchild of Google TV.”

Whether or not enough has changed since then remains to be seen, and is apparently a gamble LG is willing to take, in the U.S. at first, and then depending on sales performance, in Europe and Asia sometime down the line.

“LG has constantly strived to provide consumers with wider choices in home entertainment that bring the highest level of sophistication and convenience,” said Havis Kwon, President and CEO of LG Electronics Home Entertainment Company, when introducing Google TV at CES earlier this year. “Through Google TV, LG has merged Google’s established Android operating system with LG’s proven 3D and Smart TV technologies, offering consumers a new and enthralling TV experience.”

Along with Google TV, LG said it will continue to advance its own Smart TV platform based on NetCast, which will be thrust into 60 percent of LG’s flat panel TVs scheduled to come out in 2012.

Image Credit: LG