Another 50-50 marriage in trouble. I think Sony needs to assert more control over this half (assed) and half (witted) operation. It used to be that Panasonic or Samsung was what you bought because Sony was more expensive even though it had more features. Now it seems that Panasonic or Samsung is what you buy because Sony doesn't have this or Sony doesn't have that or.................because Sony doesn't have any significant LCD manufacturing capacity of its own.<g>
Sony Ericsson sales degenerating
By Reuters
November 26, 2002, 6:08 AM PT
Cell phone maker Sony Ericsson needs to bring out new products soon if it wants to halt a devastating sales decline, Gartner Dataquest said Tuesday as it published third-quarter handset sales statistics.
The market researcher's numbers showed that Sony Ericsson, a joint venture between Swedish mobile equipment maker Ericsson and Japanese consumer electronics giant Sony sold only 5 million cell phones worldwide in the third quarter.
This compares with more than 8.5 million sold by Ericsson and Sony before the merger, in the same quarter a year ago. The venture's market share dwindled to 4.8 percent from an estimated 8.8 percent.
"It was another devastating quarter. Unless the joint venture starts to deliver, and it needs a superb product launch at CeBit (electronics trade show in March), it's going to be very tough,'' said market analyst Ben Wood.
Sony Ericsson has said it aims to become the world's leading mobile phone maker by 2006. But it is still losing money. Ericsson said separately Tuesday it would need to pump more money into the venture in 2003 to see it through to profitability.
Gartner measures how many handsets are sold to end-users--which is known as sell-through--unlike rivals such as Strategy Analytics, which measures how many cell phones have been shipped to distributors, operators and retail chains.
Gartner's numbers revealed that Sony Ericsson's quarterly decline is even worse than Strategy Analytics' numbers suggested last week, meaning that more Sony Ericsson models are shipped into the distribution channel than are actually sold to consumers.
Market leader Nokia from Finland came out at 35.9 percent market share, up from 34.1 percent in the year-ago quarter and 35.6 percent in the second quarter of this year.
A new lineup of models has put the Finnish company in a very good position to extend its lead, Wood said, but it would be "nearly impossible'' for Nokia to achieve its medium-term target of 40 percent by the fourth quarter.
Wood also said that the fourth quarter with the holiday shopping-season was losing some of its importance as the "make or break" period of the year for the handset industry because Asian sales, spurred on by Chinese New Year in the first quarter, have also become very important for global revenues.
Like Sony Ericsson, U.S.-based Motorola also came out lower in the sell-through to consumers, at a global market share of 14.4 percent.
"Motorola looks increasingly exposed to uncertainty in China and the United States--as these two countries now account for more then 50 percent of Motorola's quarterly sales to end-users,'' analyst Ann Liang said in a statement.
South Korea's Samsung powered ahead, taking a 10.6 percent market share compared with 7.5 percent a year ago with its color display and polyphonic ring-tone models.
No. 4 Siemens from Germany, which in contrast to Samsung focuses on very low-end models and has one of the lowest average selling prices in the industry, saw its market share rise to 7.8 percent from 7.5 percent a year ago. |
