The company will ship only 35 million units this year

Nov 7, 2012 13:21 GMT  ·  By

Japanese mobile phone maker Sony Mobile said to plan on ramping up shipments of smartphones in the coming year, with a target set at 50 million units.

This year, the company is expected to top the 35 million units mark with its smartphone shipments, but it seems that this won’t be enough to bring it back to profitability.

For the next year, however, things are expected to change, and Sony is said to be working with various Taiwan-based handset ODMs for that.

DigiTimes notes that Foxconn International Holdings (FIH), Arima Communications and Compal Communications will build handsets for the company, and that 30-40% out of the total Sony smartphone shipments in 2013 will be outsourced to these companies.

While Foxconn has already started making low-cost Xperia devices for Sony, Arima will join the party in early 2013, followed by Compal in Q2 next year.