Sony Ericsson treads water to stay afloat

Sony Ericsson may appear to be untouched after the release of its newest upscale camera model, the Cyber Shot C905a, but the performance numbers tell a little bit more about the recent hits that the company has been taking in sales.

Also announced in the recent months is the second quarter losses of the joint partnership between LM Ericsson and Sony Corp which totalled up to $229 million USD.

This is a sharp difference from its second quarter in 2008 when the company was able to post a $8.5 million USD profit.

In a statement regarding the loss in profits, Dick Komiyama, the Ericsson company president said that Sony Ericsson expected a tough second quarter and does not expect to see a difference in the coming months leading to the end of 2009.

However, he did comment that Ericsson’s focus is getting back on track towards profit and growth via cost reduction measures.

Sony Ericsson estimates that the global market for handsets will shrink overall by about 10% versus the demand in 2008.

One recent cost reduction measure, taken in the last several months, ended when Sony Ericsson cut over 2,350 jobs to reduce overheads by about $1.9 billion USD.

The numbers were bad for Sony Ericsson in other quarterly reports as well, as it shipped only 18.8 millions mobile handsets during the second quarter, which is a 43% decrease from last year during the same time period.

Additionally, Sony Ericsson reported only $2.4 billion USD in sales for the second quarter, which is a 39% drop from 2008 Q2 when it posted sales of $3.9 billion.