The recent earthquake and tsunami which devastated Japan – along with recent hacker attacks on PlayStation Three – are among the reasons that Sony is predicting it will have a $3.2 billion annual loss, according to media reports.

Sony announced the projected loss ahead of its official earnings announcement on Thursday.

Originally, Sony had projected it expected a 70 billion yen ($860 million) profit, reports The Associated Press.

In a recent statement, Sony said that the earthquake hurt sales by about 22 billion yen.

In addition, Masaru Kato, Sony's chief financial officer, said shortages of parts following the earthquake have lessened but are not fully resolved.

"In the first quarter, we saw quite a major impact on our manufacturing activities," he told The AP.

Also, recently Sony saw reduced sales of flat-panel TVs and other devices, The AP said. Its music players and other devices have been hurt by competition from Apple's iPod, iPhone (News - Alert) and iPad, The AP adds.

Sony recently had a security breach that affected over 100 million online accounts.

The company temporarily closed down gaming services and began restoring the service on May 15.

In addition, Sony spent 14 billion yen ($170 million) for identity theft insurance for customers, network security upgrades, content access, customer support and investigation costs.

TMCnet said Sony has brought in outside consultants as it tries to find the hackers who were responsible for the possible exposure of personal information from over 100 million users, according to media reports.

Data Forte will work with the F.B.I., to investigate the security breach. In addition, Sony hired Guidance Software and Protiviti, which is a risk assessment firm, Reuters (News - Alert) reports. Lawyers from Baker & McKenzie are also helping in the investigation.

Sony said that names, addresses, e-mails, birth dates, phone numbers and other private information from 24.6 million Sony Online Entertainment accounts could have been taken from company servers or from an old database.

A hacker attack on the PlayStation Network may have caused the stealing of data from 77 million user accounts, according to TMCnet.

In a related matter, The AP notes that Sony saw a 40.8 billion yen ($439 million) loss for the fiscal year ended March 2010 after a 98.9 billion yen loss for the fiscal year ended in 2009.