By Yuri Kageyama, Business Writer
TOKYO (AP) --Japanese electronics and entertainment company Sony posted a 45 percent surge in its October-December profit thanks to tax cuts, a favorable exchange rate and gains in its music and movies segment.
Tokyo-based Sony Corp.'s profit in the last quarter was 429 billion yen ($3.9 billion), up from 295.9 billion yen in the same period a year earlier. Quarterly sales fell 10 percent to 2.4 trillion yen ($22 billion).
Other sectors such as games and semiconductors logged a weak performance, but they were offset by strong box-office receipts from the movie "Venom," and earnings from its imaging solutions, used in digital cameras.
Sony, which makes Alpha digital cameras, Bravia digital TVs and the Aibo robotic dog, raised its profit forecast for the fiscal year through March to 835 billion yen ($7.7 billion) from an earlier estimate of 705 billion yen ($6.5 billion). That's up from 491 billion yen recorded last year.
The company's music division benefited from the acquisition of EMI, which has a vast music catalog.
Falling PlayStation 4 console sales hurt results, while an increase in game software sales helped, according to Sony. A shift in sales to more expensive TVs boosted the bottom line, while smartphone sales lagged, it said.
South Korea fines Meta $15 million for illegally collecting information on Facebook users
South Korea's privacy watchdog on Tuesday fined social media company Meta 21.6 billion won ($15 million) for illegally collecting sensitive personal information from Facebook users, including data about their political views and sexual orientation, and sharing it with thousands of advertisers.
It was the latest in a series of penalties against Meta by South Korean authorities in recent years as they increase their scrutiny of how the company, which also owns Instagram and WhatsApp, handles private information.
Following a four-year investigation, South Korea's Personal Information Protection Commission concluded that Meta unlawfully collected sensitive information about around 980,000 Facebook users, including their religion, political views and whether they were in same-sex unions, from July 2018 to March 2022.
It said the company shared the data with around 4,000 advertisers.
South Korea's privacy law provides strict protection for information related to personal beliefs, political views and sexual behavior, and bars companies from processing or using such data without the specific consent of the person involved.
The commission said Meta amassed sensitive information by analyzing the pages the Facebook users liked or the advertisements they clicked on.
The company categorized ads to identify users interested in themes such as specific religions, same-sex and transgender issues, and issues related to North Korean escapees, said Lee Eun Jung, a director at the commission who led the investigation on Meta.
"While Meta collected this sensitive information and used it for individualized services, they made only vague mentions of this use in their data policy and did not obtain specific consent," Lee said.
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