Sony Ericsson to Sell Half as Many Handsets as Last Quarter

Ouch. Sony Ericsson (NYSE: SNE)’s first quarter of 2009 is looking like a rough one, predicting 14 million units sold. That sounds like a lot on its own, but considering they were up around 24.2 million in Q4 ‘08, that’s quite the drop. The whole thing translates to $459 million-$526 million in losses, and analysts have had some spectacularly dismal reactions.

“Investors are questioning the whole market now, even though I think the issue for Sony Ericsson is more company specific,” said Jari Honko, analyst with eQ Bank.
“It’s a real catastrophe. Those are very big losses and they are probably losing a lot of market share,” said Greger Johansson, from analyst firm Redeye.
“With competition intensifying it is going to be a tough task to regain momentum until new products appear and economic conditions improve,”  [Ben Wood, head of research at CCS Insight,] said.

All this hurting from Sony Ericsson has led them to consider a buy-out from Sony, which seems to be the way of surviving in a rough economy. The last thing we saw from Sony Ericsson was the Twiggy, which promises to be a slim evolution of the W350, and could grab a respectable bite of the mid-range market. For Sony Ericsson’s sake, I hope the C905 does well once it hits American shores, but it seems like the Xperia and upcoming Idou will be a little too rich for most people’s blood these days.

[via Reuters]