SONY Corp is still struggling but managed to reduce its red ink for the latest quarter as the Japanese electronics and entertainment company aims for a comeback from record yearly losses.

Sony yesterday reported a 10.7 billion-yen (US$115 million) loss for the October-December quarter compared with a 158 billion-yen loss a year earlier.

The company had a record loss of 457 billion yen for the fiscal year through March 2011 as its TV business struggled and it suffered from factory and supplier damage in northeastern Japan from the 2011 earthquake and tsunami.

Quarterly sales rose nearly 7 percent to 1.95 trillion yen despite declining sales of gadgets such as flat-panel TVs and Blu-ray video recorders, but only because Sony gained from a weaker yen.

The yen has been weakening because of hopes the central bank will ease monetary policy and that helped Sony by boosting the value of its overseas sales.

Sony has lost money for the past four years as it fell behind powerful rivals such as Apple Inc and Samsung Electronics Co in profitability and innovation.

Kazuo Hirai, who took over as president nine months ago, is promising to lead a comeback with what he calls "wow" products, such as nifty mobile devices, sophisticated digital cameras and interconnected gadgetry designed to show off Sony's technological prowess.

The problem is that rivals are doing the same and sometimes doing it faster and at cheaper prices.

Sony is set to disclose information about the PlayStation 4 video game machine later this month, but it's unclear whether video games can really save it.

Sony's TV division is in its ninth straight year of red ink.

Its movie business fared better on the success of "Skyfall" and "Hotel Transylvania," while its music business also did well with best-sellers in Alicia Keys' "Girl on Fire," One Direction's "Take Me Home," and Celine Dion's "Sans Attendre," according to Sony. Both divisions posted higher operating profit and sales.

Sony stuck to its forecast for eking out a return to profit at 20 billion yen for the fiscal year through March. It also left unchanged its projection for 6.6 trillion yen in annual sales, up 1.6 percent from the previous year.

Other Japanese electronics makers are also suffering but have gotten some help from the weak yen.

Panasonic Corp and Sharp Corp are both expecting huge losses for the fiscal year through March. Panasonic reported last week a 61.4 billion yen profit for October to December, reversing from losses the same quarter a year earlier, while Sharp saw a smaller flow of red ink at a 36.7 billion yen quarterly loss.

Sony has promised to reduce the bureaucracy in its managerial ranks and product-development decision-making.