14 DAY TRIAL // During the first quarter of the ongoing year, Japanese-Swedish mobile phone maker Sony Ericsson has managed to ship a number of no less than 8.1 million handsets, 23 percent lower than in the first quarter of the last year, and 28 percent down from the previous quarter.
The company has market a significant decrease in the number of feature phones it brought to the market, while increasing the smartphone shipments significantly.
The handset vendor claims that over 60 percent of the total sales during the three months period were smartphones.
During the time frame, the average selling price for the company's devices went up to Euro 141, marking a 5 percent increase year-on-year and a 4 percent compared to the previous quarter.
However, sales went down in the time frame, reaching Euro 1,145 million and marking a 19 percent decrease compared to the same quarter last year, and a 25 percent decrease when compared to the fourth quarter of 2010.
The company also announced gross margin for the quarter if 33 percent, up from the same quarter a year ago.
The company's income before taxes was a profit of Euro 15 million, down Euro 3 million on a yearly basis, and down Euro 20 million sequentially.
Sony Ericsson posted net income of Euro 11 million for the three months period (a decrease of Euro 10 million from Q1 2010, though an increase of Euro 3 million sequentially).
“Sony Ericsson’s profitability continues as we accelerate our shift towards an Android-based smartphone portfolio, with smartphones comprising over 60% of our total sales during the quarter,” Bert Nordberg, President & CEO of Sony Ericsson commented.
“Towards the end of the quarter we introduced the highly anticipated Xperia arc and Xperia PLAY, which have been well received by both operators and consumers around the world.
“However, the Japan earthquake made it a challenging quarter operationally and we are experiencing some disruptions to our supply chain. We will continue to evaluate the situation.”
The mobile phone maker estimates that its market share for the smartphone market in the time frame was of around5 percent in units, and around 3 percent in value.