TOKYO: Sony has announced a whopping $1.0 billion six-month loss, underlining the Japanese electronics giant’s struggle to drag itself out of the red, while it falls further behind rivals Panasonic and Sharp.

As the trio published their half-year earnings, Sony said the challenges of a fiercely competitive smartphone business had weighed on its bottom line.

The company is also currently in the midst of a broader restructuring as it tries to move past years of massive losses.

While Japan’s electronics giants have benefited from a sharply weaker yen, analysts have warned that the impact is fading, saying the industry giants have more work to do on reinventing themselves.

Sony’s net loss for the six months to September came in at 109.1 billion yen, way up from a loss of 16.5 billion yen in the same period last year.

It also reported an operating loss of 15.8 billion yen, reversing a profit of 49.4 billion yen a year earlier, although sales ticked up 6.5 percent to 3.71 trillion yen.

The earnings announcement comes after Sony last month downgraded its annual earnings forecasts, revealing that it would lose whopping 230 billion yen in the fiscal year to March, more than four times its earlier forecast.

The company also said it would cut the smartphone unit’s global staff by 15 percent — about 1,000 jobs — and not pay dividends for the first time since its shares started trading in Tokyo in 1958.

The smartphone business, Sony said, has been hit by weaker-than-expected results in emerging markets, as it battles global rivals including Samsung and Apple.

On the eve of the latest financial announcement, Sony said it would replace the head of its smartphone unit Kunimasa Suzuki with finance executive Hiroki Totoki.

Despite CEO Kazuo Hirai’s bid to turn around the vast company, Sony has struggled to clearly define how it will look in the future or roll out innovative products, analysts say.

Its top executive has brushed off pleas to exit the money-losing television business, a sector where one-time Japanese leaders have been hammered by lower-cost overseas rivals.

“The company has not yet given a clear vision for its smartphone business,” said Hiroshi Sakai, an analyst at SMBC Friend Securities, who warned that Sony may have to cut its annual earnings forecast again.

By contrast, rivals Panasonic and Sharp have shifted their focus away from consumer electronics as they slim down their operations, Sakai added.

“Unlike Sony, Panasonic and other electronics firms have already changed course to business-to-business operations, which have started showing some good results,” he said.

“So they’ve been recovering compared with Sony.”

Panasonic’s net profit drop actually dropped 52.2 percent to 80.9 billion yen ($729 million) for the six months, but it said the lower profit was mainly due to one-off gains a year ago from changes made to its pension scheme.

Panasonic’s operating profit rose 20.7 percent to 176.9 billion yen, on sales of 3.72 trillion yen, up 0.4 percent, as it hiked its full-year profit forecast, partially due to strong solar panel and automotive business sales.

The Osaka-based company said it expected a 175 billion yen net profit in the year to March, up from an earlier estimate of 140 billion yen.