Sony Ericsson blames component shortages for poor results
FOR THE second time this year, Sony Ericsson has blamed component shortages for disappointing handset sales in a quarter. It has also pointed the finger at increased R&D costs.
Strange, then, that company spokesperson, Aldo Liguori, admitted that only a handful of new handsets hard started shipping and at the end of the period, too. Plus the company said it was concentrating on updating existing products.
And R&D costs still rose. Given that back in March Sony Ericsson had said
that, "certain component shortages for popular mid-priced phones" were the
cause of lower than expected sales,"
the company still doesn't seem to have sorted the problem.
Although the actual number of handsets shipped in the last quarter rose to 24 million units, the average selling price dropped from €115 ($182) from €121 ($191).
The biggest disappointment for Sony Ericsson is the huge dent that all this has put in its ambitions. At the beginning of the year, Dick Komiyama, Sony Ericsson President, had pronounced, "Our objective remains to become a top three player globally by 2011."
Instead it has recently lost fourth spot to LG and slipped to the Number Five top selling handset maker worldwide.
The future could be even bleaker for the company as it is widely accepted that sales of low end handsets helped LG overtake Sony Ericsson and emerging Asian phone manufacturers are strong in this sector.
Instead, Sony Ericsson has chosen to embrace Windows Mobile in an attempt to fend off competition at the high end from Apple and Research in Motion.
Its investmen in UIQ hasn't exactly paid dividends now that has become part of the Symbian Foundation.
The jewel in the company's crown is the Walkman phone range. What it needs is a good Wallman phone Nano that it can flog as an entry level handset. µ
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It's not hard to see where Ericssony comes unstuck in the UK market. 

They insist on using more expensive Sony M2 memory stick micro instead of the industry standard micro SD. It's long been a bugbear that holds back sales of Sony digital cameras.

Their old entry-level w200i phone has a decent MP3 player and now offers great value (as low as £29 PAYG inc £10 free top up at Woolworth recently) but reviews terribly as a phone due to a wonky joystick. 

The recent W380i clamshell looks great but has gone straight to PAYG and has already dropped £20 in price -- reviews allege that it crashes.

One monthly specialist mag regularly redirects readers from Sony Walkman phones to the Nokia 5310 (not least because it uses SD memory). 

Hmm... my wife's swiss army knife Sony phone had to be recalled. Was that shortage of quality control a component?
Can't get anything right, can they? This Memory Stick Micro stupidity is typical of Sony. Their other problem is that they can't seem to make a phone that does everything. Their idiotic marketing focus on "cybershot phone" or "walkman phone" has lost them many a sale to customers like me, who just want one device that does everything reasonably well.
Sony memory puts me off buying sony products and has stopped me buying a sony laptop, sony camcorder and camera.

Sony seem to have some short-sighted fools running the show for the past 10 years, focusing on tying customers down with sony-only.

I had a sony phone back in the 1990s, wouldn't think about a Sony now because they lack function, style and reliability.

Have you seen the new HTC Touch Diamond and Touch Pro? Wow. Now they are smart, stylish, capable and having owned HTC phone's in the past they will probably be reliable but not tough.