Sony said yesterday that a new stay-at-home attitude among American families in the wake of the September 11 attacks had led to record sales at the world's second-largest consumer electronics company.

Instead of splashing out on holidays, many US consumers put PlayStation 2 games consoles at the top of their Christmas lists, leading to a better-than-expected 5m units being sold over the festive period.

The weakness of the yen against the dollar meant that when the cash finally found its way back to the company's Tokyo coffers, its relative value was higher than analysts had forecast.

On an operating basis, profits for the quarter ending December jumped 9.6% to ¥158.6bn (£830m), well ahead of the ¥133bn that the most optimistic sector watchers had been looking for. Sales grew a record 7.4% to ¥2.29 trillion.

The cost of developing and promoting PlayStation 2 has weighed heavily on the profitability of Sony and consigned it to losses for the last 18 months. The strength of yesterday's sales figures was seen by analysts as payback for that investment.

About 18m consoles are expected to be sold in the financial year 2001-2, which ends in March. A year ago the games division was losing ¥13.9bn but over the Christmas quarter it turned in an operating profit of ¥66.4bn.

Sales of Sony's other electronic goods were mixed. Although items such as the Wega hi-tech televisions and Vaio laptop computers continued to sell well, profits in the consumer electronics division were down 42% on a year ago.

They are expected to fall further during the January quarter. "The electronics business continues to be tough, but the game business is solid," said chief financial officer Teruhisa Tokunaka.

Film and music - two divisions that Sony has invested heavily in but seen little return from - remained fragile.

Sales at the film division were flat, with only sustained takings from the likes of last year's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon offsetting a poor performance from more recent releases.