By Kiyoshi Takenaka

TOKYO  - Sony Corp. swung to a better-than-expected quarterly operating profit, propelled by robust sales of flat TVs and gains from mobile phone joint venture with Ericsson.

A weaker yen also helped the electronics and entertainment conglomerate overcome valuation losses at its life insurance unit and start-up costs for its PlayStation 3 game console.

The box-office hit "The Da Vinci Code" boosted Sony's movie division sales by 42 per cent in the quarter, but marketing expenses linked to the release of new pictures pushed the business into the red.

Sony will launch PS3, the latest version of its blockbuster game machine, in November. It will compete for holiday buyers' attention with Nintendo Co. Ltd.'s upcoming Wii and Microsoft Corp.'s Xbox 360 in the nearly $30 billion video game market.

"The first quarter result shows, I think, a strength in the electronics division, though we have to take into account the effect of the the yen's weakness during the quarter," said Mizuho Securities senior analyst Koichi Hariya.

Sony earned an operating profit of 27.05 billion yen ($232.5 million) in April-June, topping a consensus forecast of 18 billion yen in a poll of seven analysts by Reuters Estimates and swinging from a 6.58 billion yen loss a year earlier.

"The biggest contributing factor was television. It was still in the red, but we made a substantial progress. We also saw brisk sales of digital cameras, and cost cutting measures progressed smoothly," said Chief Financial Officer Nobuyuki Oneda.

For the full year to next March, Sony revised up its operating profit forecast by 30 per cent to 130 billion yen due to changes in its own accounting. It compared with a consensus of 159.8 billion yen from 18 brokerages polled by Reuters Estimates. The new forecast compares with a 191.26 billion yen profit last business year.

Struggling electronics maker Sanyo Electric Co. Ltd. swung to a quarterly operating profit of 2.6 billion yen from loss of 13.0 billion yen a year earlier, thanks to cost reduction. But slumping sales of digital camera and mobile phones for overseas markets sent its quarterly sales down 11 percent.

Sony's announcement comes a day after rival Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. Ltd., a maker of Panasonic brand products, reported a 41.5 per cent jump in quarterly profit on strong demand for its plasma TVs.

In the liquid crystal display (LCD) TV market, Sony had lagged far behind Sharp Corp.

But a multi-million dollar marketing campaign for its Bravia brand TVs and joint panel production with Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. turned the Tokyo-based company into a contender for the top spot in the fast-growing market last year.

Sony reported a loss of 1.2 billion yen from its pictures division against a 4.2 billion profit a year ago on hefty marketing costs for films to be released in the third quarter of the calendar year.

Shares of Sony closed up 2.2 per cent at 5,020 yen ahead of the result, outperforming the Tokyo stock market's electrical machinery index, which rose 1.8 per cent.

Sony lost more than 7 per cent in the financial first quarter, roughly in line with the Tokyo stock market's electrical machinery index.

(Additional reporting by Yuka Obayashi and Fumiya Mizuno)

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