Japanese electronics maker Sony Corporation has announced it would be cutting 8,000 jobs, which translates as 4 percent of the company’s global work force, in order to reduce costs by $1.1 billion a year.

The measure was prompted by the worldwide economic crisis that’s currently affecting more and more companies and industries by the day, on one hand, and on the other hand, by a stronger yen.

Sony has revealed that by the end of March 2010, the job slashing operation would be finalized, adding that the cuts were all to be in the electronics sector. Presently, the company has 185,000 employees throughout the world, of which 160,000 in the electronics business.

In addition, Sony informed it was planning to pull the plug on a number of plants, including one in Dax, France, along with reducing investment in electronics and outsourcing some of the work.

These actions, according to the company, would render them to save over 100 billion yen ($1.1 billion) annually, until March 2010.

Senior Vice President Naofumi Hara has stated that the financial crisis was affecting United States, European, Japanese and emerging nations’ economies, adding that it was impossible to predict when the crisis would come to an end, which made the measures necessary.

Recently, several other Japanese manufacturers have announced they would be taking a similar course of action in an attempt to survive the economic crisis, but Sony’s cut-offs are the biggest Japan has faced since the credit crunch arose in the U.S. this summer.

Sony Corporation manufactures the Walkman portable player and the PlayStation 3 gaming console and since approximately 80 percent of the demand for their products comes from overseas, the company’s revenue was abated by virtue of the fluctuations in currencies, with the dollar having gone down to 93 yen from 117 yen the previous year.