year restructuring plan called "Transformation 60" that was scheduled to end in the current business year. But revenues and profits have not recovered. Sony has been hit by steep price drops and weakening demand for ageing product lines such as CRT TVs and CD Walkmans in which it has a relatively high market shares. It has been investing aggressively in chips and other core parts such as LCD panels to achieve a vertically integrated production structure, which it believed was key to differentitating its products from low-cost rivals. Sony said it would invest a total of 340 billion yen in semiconductors in the two business years ending in March 2008, after investing about 500 billion yen over the three years through next March. It also unveiled plans to establish a display group to work on developing organic light emmitting diode (OLED) displays, a promising next-generating flat panel that could one day replace LCDs in a number of applications. --More 1431 Local Time 1131 GMT
