By Jo Best, 16 October 2003 16:00
NEWS Sony Ericsson published its results for the third quarter of this year and reported its first profit for a couple of years to boot, but it'll be keeping the champagne on ice for a while yet. The handset manufacturer puts the positive results down to a mixture of savings and boosted sales. As well as polishing the supply chain and increasing operating efficiency in order to trim the financial fat, the market's hunger for imaging phones, including the heavily promoted T610, has helped handset sales climb to 7.1 million for the quarter a rise of over two million on the corresponding quarter in 2002. But it's Sony Ericsson's new flirtation with profit that's been the major telco talking point. While the company had posted a loss of 93m in the third quarter of 2002 and 88m in Q2 of this year, this quarter saw a profit of 62m and revenues of 1305m, with the Japanese arm of the business leading the way. Katsumi Ihara, president of Sony Ericsson, said in a statement: "We are encouraged by the improvements achieved during the third quarter and particularly with the high demand for our PDC phones in Japan and the continued success of the T610-series in GSM markets." However, the company warned that although it expects sales to grow in the coming months, the large number of cheaper models in Sony Ericsson's portfolio could hold it back from continuing its present form.
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