Foxconn will lay off 600 people in its Slovak plant where it makes LCD TVs for Sony due to low demand, Slovak business daily Hospodarske noviny reported on Monday.

The Black Friday glad tidings from consumer electronics makers continued on Tuesday, with Sony announcing a big rise in US sales and Microsoft reporting a record week for its Xbox 360 console and Kinect controller. The news followed Nintendo's announcement on Monday of receord sales of its Wii and 3DS gaming machines.

Sony Corp warned of a fourth straight year of losses, with its television unit alone set to lose $2.2 billion on tumbling demand and a surging yen, sinking its US shares and raising concerns about the viability of its high-profile TV business.

A public-private fund that will acquire the small- and mid-size LCD operations of Toshiba, Hitachi and Sony will also buy a Panasonic factory for about JPY20 billion (US$255.5 million), Japanese business daily The Nikkei said.

Sony Corp.,reeling from seven consecutive annual losses in television manufacturing, plunged the most in more than seven months in Tokyo after announcing a reorganization of the business into three groups.

In the face of slumping TV sales and a glut of panels for liquid crystal displays, Sony is considering options for its LCD panel joint venture with South Korea's Samsung Electronics, including possibly ending the alliance, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Sony Corp will recall 1.6 million of its Bravia brand LCD televisions worldwide after several incidents of TV sets emitting smoke or parts melting due to faulty components, a company official said on Wednesday.

It has been a rough year for Sony after its PlayStation Network security breach this past spring. But it has enjoyed a bit of a respite after rolling out its new pair of tablets this past month, as well as showing off its forthcoming handheld game device, Vita, at Tokyo Game Show.

With sales of 3D TVs still sluggish, Sony hopes videogames will get more consumers to embrace the technology at home.

Both Sony and JVC announced the introduction of the first so-called "4K" projectors for the home theater market. Both systems were based on liquid crystal on silicon (LCoS) imaging chips but that's where the similarities ended.

Sony's two recently unveiled tablets, the Tablet S and Tablet P, are rumoured to become the first real competitors to Apple's iPad and iPad 2.

Sony is using CEDIA Expo 2011 here this week to unveil several new high-end ES-series products that are said to achieve new performance excellence levels for the custom and A/V specialty markets.

Among Sony's releases at IFA is one that could put a dent in Kindle's dominance of the eReader space - the 6-inch Sony Reader Wi-Fi.

Price and design are the two biggest factors driving the e-reader market; and in the past, Sony severely dragged its feet on the former. But today the company has rectified the situation with the introduction of the newest Sony Reader Wi-Fi PRS-T1.

Sony is returning to its innovative roots with the introduction of a head-mounted display that simulates a 62.5-foot screen.

Sony Electronics, trying to advance its music players into the modern age of digital devices, showed a prototype today of a new Walkman based on Google's Android operating system--and CNET got the first public look.

Seagate has shipped its one millionth solid state hybrid drive for laptop PCs after launching the product - Momentus XT - in spring 2010. Major computer makers including Alienware, ASUS, Dell, Sony and Toshiba now offer laptops powered by the 2.5-inch drive.