Sony Ericsson's financials for Q4 2011 were announced today, and they look pretty rough. They lost 207 million Euros in the quarter (roughly $270 million), and 247 million Euros for the full year. They attribute the loss to "intense competition, price erosion and restructuring charges," or in other words, moving everything into Sony's offices as part of the acquisition. Apparently a natural disaster in Thailand also screwed up their manufacturing processes last quarter. On the plus side, SE's shift from feature phones to smartphones has yielded a 65 percent increase in Xperia sales since last year. Of course, since they're only doing smartphones now, they've shipped 20 percent fewer phones overall since last year.
Sony Ericsson had some nice gear to show off at CES, and with Sony controlling everything from here on in, maybe the production process will be a bit more streamlined. The original Xperia X10 was a bit of a bumpy start for Sony Ericsson's Android foray, and since then they've been slightly behind the curve on specs, but I've been a big fan of most of their software customizations, and some of their hardware has some really distinctive style in a sea of samey smartphones. Here's hoping Sony can hold onto that and make the Xperia family properly competitive.
Source: Sony Ericsson
Reader comments
Sony Ericsson takes a loss in Q4 2011 results
Well in the U.S they dont sell phones on Sprint or T-mobile so you cut off half the people right there.Also carriers like straight talk Metro pcs no Sony smart phones. So sell your products to more people maybe you wouldn't lose so much money
Well SE did make cellphones for U.S. GSM providers until recently. But when they dropped CDMA handsets 10 years ago they automatically gave up over half the U.S. market.
I wanted to say the exact same thing. I've been with Sprint for over 10 years and have yet to see a Sony branded phone. I'd love to have their "Active" phone since I'm around water a lot. Oh well. I guess that's why Sony will "sink" while HTC, Samsung will "swim".
Maybe "Sony" alone will come to other carriers.
http://tinyurl.com/cend4gm
Should the title be 2011 not 2012?
Nope! This was the end of last year.
I didn't know SE had stopped making non-smartphones.It's a shame,their Walkman & CyberShot cellphones were excellent devices.Is there really no market for quality regular phones anymore?