Sony Ericsson, the joint Japanese – Swedish mobile phone manufacturer, has posted record earnings for the fourth quarter of 2006 thanks to high demand for its Walkman music phones and high end camera phones.
Sales are expected to increase 12% in 2007 and could take Sony Ericsson into the top 3 manufacturers alongside market leaders Nokia and Motorola who have been hit by strong price competition on mid range handsets.
Analysts believe that Sony Ericsson has performed well in the mid to high end market and has taken market share from Nokia in this area increasing their share of the global handset market by 1% to 9% in just 3 months.
Ben Wood at CCS Insight noted the strength of the Sony brands and how they were driving sales of the high end devices:
The growing volume of Walkman and Cybershot devices is a strong endorsement of its proposition-led strategy, but the challenge for 2007 will be to turn its mindshare in these areas into market share.
Nokia believes that the market will increase by 10% in 2007 and Sony Ericsson has increased its expected sales figures to 1.1 billion units.
Samsung are currently ranked third in terms of handset sales with 32 million sales in Q4 compared to 26 million for Sony Ericsson. Nokia has over 100 million for the same period.
Sony Ericsson is expected to launch a series of ultra thin phones to rival the Samsung D900 and the Motorola RAZR during the next few months.
