TOKYO — Sony expects to return to profit this year, aiming to reduce by half the losses in its television business, which pushed the Japanese consumer electronics giant to a record loss of ¥455 billion in its financial year that ended last March.

The net loss is the equivalent of $5.7 billion.

Sony shares slipped to a quarter-century low this week, a sign of how the company that created the Walkman and PlayStation has lost its innovative edge and fallen behind Apple and Samsung Electronics. Since the start of the year, Sony shares have dropped 12 percent, while the benchmark Nikkei 225 index has gained nearly 7 percent. The company’s market value is now $15 billion, or just 3 percent of Apple’s.

Sony forecast a full-year net profit of ¥30 billion in its current financial year, which runs through next March. It expects an operating profit of ¥180 billion. The figure is slightly ahead of market estimates but would be a rebound from an operating loss of ¥67.3 billion in the year just ended.

“The operating profit forecast isn’t far off the level seen two years ago,” said Kenichi Hirano, operating officer at Tachibana Securities in Tokyo. “This suggests we’re on a recovery trend and last year was definitely the bottom. But I think not everyone in the market is convinced of this, especially since the company lacks a solid plan to turn around its TV business.”

Under its new chief, Kazuo Hirai, Sony is cutting costs — 10,000 jobs will go, or 6 percent of the global work force — in a bid to turn its struggling television unit around. At a briefing last month, Mr. Hirai sketched a future driven by mobile devices like the Xperia smartphone, games and cameras, as well as medical devices and electric car batteries, along with big cost cuts in the television business, which has lost more than $10 billion over eight years.

Mr. Hirai, now little more than a month into his job as chief executive, has set a target for group sales of ¥8.5 trillion in two years, with an operating margin of more than 5 percent. “This is our only chance to change,” he said last month. He has yet to spell out just how Sony will achieve its goals.

“In handsets, without big innovations, Sony will still be a second-tier smartphone market player,” said S.R. Kwon, an industry analyst at Dongbu Securities in Seoul.

The company said Thursday it expected to sell 33 million smartphones this year, up from 22.5 million last year.