Sony shares dropped 3.7 percent on Friday following this week's announcement of the Sony Online Entertainment hack and the continued PlayStation Network down time.
Tokyo financial markets were closed from Tuesday to Thursday for national holidays, but they reacted negatively to news of the most recent data security breach, which resulted in the personal information of 25 million customers being compromised.
ZoomCitigroup Global Markets Japan analyst Kota Ezawa said in a research note (via Reuters): "There is a real concern that trust in Sony's business will decline. The network business itself still only makes a small direct contribution to earnings, but we see a potential drop in hardware sales as a concern."
Sony president Howard Stringer today apologised for the hacks which exposed PSN and SOE customers' details to an unauthorised third party - and for the down time which has suspended the PSN for over two weeks.
While the PSN is expected to be back up and running in some capacity this week, the storm might not yet be over. A group of hackers is planning a third "major attack" on Sony this weekend, reports are suggesting.
