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
