Today Sony Ericsson announced their Q4 reports and had some less than stellar news to share. I didn’t want to call this earnings because it appears they’ve actually recorded a $318 million dollar loss for Q4 instead of earnings. This was a pre-tax loss of €247m ($318m) amid “intense competition” along with the poor economic climate. Hopefully their new take on Android will help things out in the coming months.
I say “new take on Android” for a few reasons. One being that Sony Ericsson has just sold their 50% to SONY giving the technology and electronics giant full control. Sony has recently announced that they’ll be going all in with Android in 2012 and plan to have a much better showing. Most devices from Sony Ericsson throughout 2011 were always slightly under the competition in terms of raw performance and hardware — although they do have impressive cameras.
Another factor could be the lack of traction in the US markets although SE phones were popular elsewhere in the world. Many of their devices just as I mentioned above fell short to the competition because they lacked the new specs the others had. Such as dual-core processors, larger displays, and HD screens. We reviewed the Xperia ray and while it was nice — I’d never own one. 2012 however shows a lot of promise for Sony. As they showed off the Xperia S and the ION at CES (links below) and we’ve recently seen a roadmap detailing 11 new smartphones for 2012 from Sony — many of which look to be high end devices such as the Hayabusa and MINT.
Sony Ericsson will announce their full report later this month and most likely it will look just as grim. I have a feeling they are patiently waiting for that $1.47 billion dollar payout and giving the reigns to Sony for good.
[via SlashGear]
