- Monday, 9 November 2009
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It is hard to believe that a man is telling the truth when you know that you would lie if you were in his place - H.L. Mencken
Sony Ericsson takes a clobbering
SONY ERICSSON is the first handset vendor to admit to having taken a clobbering in Q3 2008. It's partly due to its reliance on Europe but more on a severe decrease in the Average Selling Price (ASP) for handsets.
The INQ had predicted that its Walkman brand would help shore up sales but the C902 Cybershot camera-phone is the surprise hit model of the quarter.
The company also is due to launch Playnow with Telenor in Sweden during Q4 2008 with a special edition of the W902 Walkman phone with Playnow built-in.
It has also introduced three new Walkman phones including its first models with integrated Youtube support (W595, W902, G705).
Despite the doom and gloom SE still managed to ship 25.7 million units in Q3 2008 and says its market share remains about flat at eight per cent. That will keep it in the number five slot unless Motorola does even worse.
Sony Ericsson forecasts that the global handset market for 2008 will grow at a rate of around 10 per cent from more than 1.1 billion units in 2007. The catch is that a lot of these handsets are going to emerging markets.
The bad news is that SE made its first loss in five years of around £19.4 million which means that it might have to tighten its belt more than the £232 million cost reductions it has already announced.
This should lead to one in five of its existing handset models disappearing. µ
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Maybe the Xperia X1 will help.
Bought a top of the range walkman phone which had problems after only a few months of ownership and has always suffered from bad reception (no signal more often than not) a problem I have never experienced with any other phone on the same network and at the same time (my GF's phone is on the same network and shows 3 bars or more when mine has none). SE would not replace the phone and only offered a cheap/nasty outsourced repair service, my phone came back with faults and the faults that were repaired happened again after the warranty had expired. 

I will never buy any SE products again no matter how good they are supposed to be! In my experience the longevity of their handsets is questionable, the after-sales/repair service is poor, rubbing salt into the wound given the premium prices charged.