Sony Ericsson needs to raise 100 million euros to stay afloat, says CFO
By Laura June 
posted May 20th 2009 4:31PM
posted May 20th 2009 4:31PM
Things haven't looked great for Sony Ericsson -- which reported its sales were down 50% during the first quarter -- for quite a piece of time now. Well, now Sony's CFO has admitted that falling demand combined with a "gap" in its product portfolio has created problems for the company. He also acknowledged that the company needs to raise about 100 million euros by the end of this fiscal year (March of 2010) to keep on trucking. Sony Ericsson is reportedly considering numberless cash-raising options, but no plans are yet set in stone. We wish them luck!
How about you start making some decent devices, SE? I don't want the same shit over and over again, fools.
Hear hear.
+ one
Coming from someone who's named "ILoveApple" ... sheep. You're probably a facebook sheep aswell.. sheep along, follow the crowd.. follower. :)
@Jakko: whats wrong with being on Facebook?? I been on there for 5 years now, LONG before it became popular and everyone was on myspace...
@Jakko
You're one of those air breathers, aren't ya? Always following the crowd by breathing air and getting high on life. Go on, then, breathe air.. air breather!
@Schweppes
Shut up.
@Schweppes: dude whatever you are on you might wanna tell ya doc to lower the dosage....its not helping but making things worse...I was on facebook because I was iin College and used to to connect with classmates new and old...attention whore?? thats what you are doing here on Engadget...
The Sony Xperia X1 was trash, bought one and sold it the day after. Thanks a lot SE for screwing with me. I hope the Nokia N97 won't be a downer....
for once i must agree with the apple fanboy.
SE's smartphone section has been mostly non-existent since the death of Symbian UIQ (except the xperia). I hope they decide on what OS to use on new smartphones before it's too late.
as for their stupidphones: i guess they are ok, nice cameras and whatever. but none of their products has been really groundbreaking lately. everything they make is just kind of average
why not a bake sale?
@Schweppes,
Don't laugh at your own jokes on the internet.
I suggest a bake sale.
As a long time user of SE phones I couldn't agree with you more. For a while they made excellent smartphones (they called them communicators) but aside from the overpriced Xperia (which is a beautiful device) not much else of note has come from SE. Enough with the stupid phones with 12 gazillion megapixels!!!
I'm pretty sure a PSPhone could help them out....
yep. why bother raising money if you can't do anything right with it? PSP phone or die. Not really much more to say.
I third that. And shame on you SE/// for letting the fruit n00bs upstage you (that goes for you to Nokia). Now snap out of it and bring on the PSPhone already and stop standing there "SHOOK, SCARED TO DUCK SCARED TO LOOK!"
DEATH TO THE RULING CLASS!
I'm surprised, SE's devices were good quality in my eyes. Shame really. Considering the K750i was such a good handset for me. Other things can be said about the W580i though.
Everyone I have meet who have the K750i have been deeply in love with the phone. Most likely one of SE finest products to date.
This is what happens when you create the same variation on a theme a million times over. Take note Apple.
They need to learn from nokia. You use one nokia phone, you more or less know how to use the rest. I can't say the same about SE phones.
Actually NO .. not Nokia .. they need to learn from or be bought out by Samsung or LG .. they're the BIG movers in the world phone market.
Nokia is treading water .. the two Korean companies are surfing a pretty decent development wave .. and will probably overtake Nokia at some point in the next few years.
SE does have some nice products but .. nice and price are very close companions these days .. One handset SE could take a cue from is Nokia's 5800 ( a development handset really ) which attractively priced is selling like hotcakes (its one of the few bright spots in the latest Gartner report for Nokia).
They dont make bad phones but they are all the same, to many versions of the same thing using the same OS, this is what killed motorolla
Time to fold Sony Ericsson... or how about buy some more time and become Sony Nokia Ericsson. I mean how much of a market can they possibly compete for at this point. I mean sure they could have had PSP integration and or other Sony integration, but no, it's gotta be proprietary and utterly complex.
I hope this situation will help SE realize what they're doing wrong. Tip: high price && bad hardware. Tip2: Nokia does the opposite these days - made a new platform for its devices and dropped prices quite significantly.
Tip3: Nokia = leading phone maker, SE = dropping market share. I hope SE doesn't need more tips.
Don't think it's high price that is their problem. I picked mine up for £20 and is perfectly good phone, just a bit bland.
@Sam
The main problem is that SE thinks we have to pay for the "premium" brand - SonyEricsson. I'm afraid that idea comes from the Sony part. and won't change any time soon. After all, they have 3.5mm minijack only in their "premium" phones - W995 and Xperia X1 (which isn't even made by SE, its made by HTC for SE). Samsung, Nokia, LG all have 3.5mm minijack in a very wide range of phones, not only the most expensive ones. Why minijack? Its smaller and easier to use than fastport. And headphones are made for 3.5mm.
As for hardware - their mobile cameras used to be best from the bunch in the time of K750. But K850 was a completely different level than competitors - noticeably worse. I'm not even mentioning music quality - Walkmans by Sony are at absolutely different level, so I don't think SE has the right to call their phones "walkman" - listen to both and you'll understand.
I really hope they fix their issues, SE used to be my favorite mobile phone maker.
SE phones are everywhere over here. Strange that they would be in such a bad financial position.
They're everywhere because nobody wants them so nobody buys them ;)
I wonder if iPhone mega sales have anything to do with this
Clearly superior than experia on so many levels n I'm a Sony fanboy.
yeah partially I guess but I would say more to do with how well Samsung and LG have better captured the market with the range of their phones.
As phones got smarter SE missed the boat and were still promoting Walkman phone this and Cybershot phone that. In essence splitting the major functions.
Create good convergent phones but I fear you have already missed the boat and Idou will be met with damp reception.
SE phones were innovation till Walkman W550i. All after that was pure recycled garbage. After my W550i was 2 yr old, I got SE P1i. It used to hang/restart once or twice every day and not a reliable device. I got faulty piece. My friends got W595 which had same problem.
If my one phone has A+X features, next model will have A-X+Y features. So i dont get all features at the same time inspite paying more price. To be honest, Symbian OS sucks. Its mostly non responsive due to poor optimizations. I still wish SE could have come up with IDOU long time back and get rid of current version of Symbian junk. For me the main reasons for their fall are
1. Boring same interface phone after phone
2. No significant increase in processor speed with major
3. No eco system where peeps can get apps to enhance their experience
4. New batches of phones plagued with stability problems
5. Only targeted trendy hip youngsters but not substantial business clientele (Maybe except Xperia which was big flop)
SE? Symbian? I think you meant UIQ which is different from symbian.. S60 is fast on proper hardware btw ;)
SE should start making some smartphones with good multimedia capabilities in them, instead of rehashing dumb featurephones with proprietary ports...
I have a P1i and it's a great phone. I heard that the initial models were kinda crappy but I got mine 4 months after its release and with the latest software update I hardly have crashes. I think I had one in the last 3 months. It's a very reliable smartphone IMO and the price I paid for it was very good at the time when I got it, more than an year ago.
UIQ and S60 are interfaces for Symbian (like KDE and Gnome for Linux).
Why not just make a really good phone that people like???
Take a look at the Sony Ericsson Idou. It's going to be an awesome phone, looks pretty snazzy too!
How about you do up the chipset in your phones then Sony?
Was going to get the new C905 handset, get this, its a 8MP cam, Wifi, GPS, yet it only records video in QVGA resolution, because they havent put a good enough processor in it to cope with VGA quality. There have been low end cameraphones for years that shoot VGA video, and this thing that is supposed to be their flagship handset can't even do it.
put android on xperia and find some carrier to sell it for 199.98$
No wonder.
I have a C902, it was the first and will be the last SE I purchase. Randomly resets, can't play music while doing anything else and the browser is dreadful.
Pre or iPhone here I come.
What a true killer comment. Well said!
Did you update?
Use the SEUS.
They make decent phones, expensive, but decent but c'mon they are pushing too much tech in a crowded market.
But here is the real deal, who the fuck cares. We aren't having a phone shortage so let Sony- Ericsson go cry in a corner by themselves.
I genuinely hope that SE do manage to raise enough to keep going. I cant really comment on their current phones but I recently bought a W850i from a friend for the silly price of £25 and I'm thoroughly impressed with the it. Despite it being a 2/3 year old phone it's feature packed and has 3G as well as a capable browser that still allows me to use YouTube and Facebook with some ease (although I do tend to use Opera Mini 4.2 more often) The phone software supports x64 and is very smooth (especially using the phone as a modem; plug in, hit connect and bam the software configures any connections in Windows)
Battery life is also good with me using the Walkman music player for around 6 hours a day and still having 50% battery afterwards. Sure if you use 3G the battery does start to go down noticeably although it still provides more than enough time to browse without rushing. It also has an adjustable equalizer which I do like to give my not-so amazing headphones a little boost; granted it's only a 5-band EQ it still is handy.
Stability wise I've not had any crashes or serious problems with it.
I apologise if this seems like a pointless review+rant but I'm just adding my piece here; while this is the only SE phone I've had it's a great device and if SE do go under I will miss them (esp. if their current phones are like this)
Have any of you used this phone? What do you think about it? Your views are very welcome!
:)
I just don't understand why I have to comprimise with their phones,
I want all the features of the cybershot phones with the walkman stuff as well. Seems like it should have been simple enough.
Sony Ericssons "dumb" phones over the last few years were/are amazingly well made and easy to use. I just think they are having real trouble adapting to a less proprietary more fully featured smart phone market.
I've always had SE phones, but have just switched to a Nokia smart phone because the features were better, it used a 3.5mm jack/micro usb/micro sd rather than fastport (spit!)/memory stick micro (spit spit!) and I could get a third party mapping app that I wanted for it.
Adapt or die SE.
100million Euros, that's it? GM can burn through that before lunch break.
Why not ask satisfied customers to donate 5 euro each? It's a lot less than what a phone costs and they might make the cut and continue making the devices that satisfied customers, such as myself, would like them to continue creating.
I've got a W760 at the moment and it's not terrible... does have the random restart issues that 90% of SE phones seem to have...
Got it to replace a K800i... pretty sorry I did.
I've always held out hope that SE would pull out something amazing with the X1, but unfortunately that wasn't the case. Guess I'm going to have to look for a new brand to follow, preferably not Nokia (I work in a place that sells phones and I see quite a few come back with busted keys, bad screens, etc.), and no way in hell I'm joining the iphone flock of sheep. I'd rather have a Motorola Razr (the original one with 8mb internal memory and no memory card slot) than an iphone