Q2 Highlights:
Continued sales & volume growth
Positive momentum generates market share gain
Success of Walkman phones continues
Launch of first Cyber-shot phone
The consolidated financial summary for Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications AB (Sony Ericsson) for the second quarter ended June 30, 2006 is as follows:
Q2 2005
Q1 2006
Q2 2006
Numbers of units shipped (million)
11,8
13,3
15,7
Sales (EURO m.)
1,614
1,992
2,272
Income before taxes (EURO m.)
87
151
211
Net income (EURO m.)
75
109
143
Units shipped in the quarter reached 15.7 million, a 33% increase compared to the same period last year, and generated an increase in market share both on a year-on-year and sequential basis. Sales for the quarter were Euro 2,272 million, representing a year-on-year increase of 41%. Income before taxes was Euro 211 million representing a year-on-year increase of 143%. Net income was Euro 143 million. Sony Ericsson continued the momentum of the first quarter by shipping three new Walkman® branded phones, the W300, W700 and W42S as well as announcing two new stylish Walkman models: the W850, a tri-band/UMTS slider phone, and the quad-band EDGE W710, the first sports Walkman® with pedometer and jogging applications. The quad-band EDGE W810 Walkman® phone, a follow-up to the popular W800, became a big success during the quarter and continued to build the company’s position as a leader in mobile music. This was further enhanced by the shipment of the W42S for KDDI, the first Walkman® branded phone for the Japanese market. Following the successful introduction of the Walkman® brand to the mobile phone market last year, the company started shipping the K800, Sony Ericsson’s first Cyber-shot™ branded 3.2 Megapixel camera phone, bringing an instantly recognisable Sony camera brand to its high-tier imaging products. In Japan, Sony Ericsson increased its line up of FOMA™ phones for NTT DoCoMo to three, with the shipment of the SO702i and SO902iWP+. “The second quarter has seen Sony Ericsson both announce and start to ship a wide variety of products confirming the company’s ability to compete, capture market share and profitably grow the business. With a product line-up that includes a broad range of both basic and feature phones, Sony Ericsson is now in a position to broaden its customer base in all market regions and customer segments,” said Miles Flint, President of Sony Ericsson. R&D investment continued to increase to support further expansion of the portfolio in 2007 and marketing expenditure also increased as new products, such as the K610, K800 and the eagerly awaited M600 Symbian OS messaging phone entered the market towards the end of the quarter. Average Selling Price (ASP) declined slightly sequentially, due to a greater proportion of low-priced models, such as the J100, J220 and J230 shipping in volume. Growth in the global handset market continued to outpace expectations, and Sony Ericsson now forecasts the global market outlook for 2006 to be above 950 million units, up from the previous estimate of “above 900 million units”. FOMA is a trademark of NTT DoCoMo, Inc. in Japan and other countries. NTT DoCoMo’s FOMA service is only available to subscribers in Japan.WALKMAN® and Cyber-shot™ are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sony Corporation.Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications serves the global communications market with innovative and feature-rich mobile phones, accessories, and PC-cards. Established as a joint venture by Sony and Ericsson in 2001, with global corporate functions located in London, the company employs approximately 6,000 people worldwide, including R&D sites in Europe, Japan, China and America. Sony Ericsson is the global title sponsor of the Women’s Tennis Association, and works with the Association to promote the Sony Ericsson WTA Tour in over 80 cities during the year. For more information on Sony Ericsson, please visit www.sonyericsson.com
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“The Argentinean designer Manuel Lypes Revol has developed some interesting Bluetooth-accessories in the framework of the Nokia Icon project. The style agrees with the fashion handset Nokia 7280.One of them is the bracelet equipped with an OLED LCD, which can display SMS, incoming calls, time and graphics. The second accessory is the ring for the thumb. At the incoming call or message the stripes start glowing” via mobile-review.com
“Media players seem to be a dime a dozen these days, with just about everyone (with the exception of a certain produce-named company) releasing a fairly entry-level gadget that not only tackles the standard MP3 fare, but also a number of photo and video formats as well. Minox spends most of its time in the camera world, but they’ve jumped into the portable media player realm with the DMP-3, the successor to the DMP-2 and DMP-1.The Volkswagen-designed device throws down a 2.5-inch LCD display and what appears to be an iPod-like user interface sans a click wheel. It appears to only take MP3s on the audio front, but it can double as a digital photo album and portable video viewer. Built-in memory is rather anemic at 128MB, so you’ll need to make use of the SD expansion slot for any kind of real storage.We’re still waiting on an official announcement regarding a launch date and price, but our best estimates have it in the $200 range.” 
“TOKYO, Japan and London, UK – 12 July 2006 – Symbian Limited today announces the availability of Symbian OS v9.3, the latest evolution of the world’s leading smartphone operating system.Symbian OS v9.3 builds on the success of the v9 family as a robust, secure, open and standards-based OS for smartphones. It includes incremental enhancements in line with market requirements related to phone performance and reducing time-to-market for handset vendors and network operators’ cost-effective deployment of revenue-generating services, content and applications.With an aim to extend Symbian smartphones into the mass-market, Symbian’s focus is to ensure Symbian OS is adopted as the operating system of choice by its customers, the world’s leading handset manufacturers, for the development of higher volume and lower cost, advanced, data-enabled phones also known as smartphones for 2.5G, 3G and HSDPA networks around the world.Jorgen Behrens, Vice-President, Product Management and Strategy, said: “As the smartphone category broadens into different market segments and quickly expands across global regions, Symbian continues to focus on delivering a flexible and robust open mobile operating system. Symbian OS v9.3 will allow handset manufacturers and network operators to get the best and most differentiated phones to market faster, with lower costs and more easily. Approximately 35 million Symbian smartphones shipped in 2005. By providing enhanced market leading provisioning with Symbian OS v9.3 and a consumer market trend leaning towards convergence, we expect smartphone shipment numbers to increase rapidly.”Symbian OS v9.3 is fully backwards compatible with previous versions in the v9 family. Symbian OS licensees currently have phones based on Symbian OS v9.3 in development, with product launches anticipated in 2007.Symbian OS v9.3 includes: Improved phone performance Shorter start-up times for phones and key applications Improved memory management resulting in more responsive applications and phone features ensuring smartphones work as quickly with better quality features as mid-range phones Reduced development and ownership cost, and time to market New development tools Symbian OS awareness for the Eclipse/CDT IDE framework and Nokia’s Carbide.c++ Development Tools for Symbian OS v9.3 phones Configuration tools to easily create and customise Symbian OS variants The Symbian Verification Suite to support compatibility and phone integration for creating Symbian OS variants, reducing time taken to customize phones for operators targeting different market segments A fully searchable on-line edition of the Symbian OS Library including a significant amount of new content Backwards compatibility from v9.1, easy migration for phone vendors, technology and third party software providers Reference design for Symbian OS v9.3 with Freescale and Nokia S60 Hindi and Vietnamese language support for improved market coverage Support for new hardware Native support for WiFi USB 2.0 on-the-go, allowing faster device connectivity Support for key operator services and requirements Firmware over the air (FOTA) provisioning, FOTA allows network operators to provide OTA software upgrades or fixes lowering cost of ownership HSDPA support Introduction of IPSec for UMA service (Voice over IP) Improved 3GPP R5 support Native support for Push To Talk Java JSR 248 support Yankee Group,John Jackson, Director, Wireless/Mobile Technologies, Yankee Group, said: “By 2010, well over 200 million smartphones will be selling worldwide each year, representing 18% of annual global volumes. As smartphones functionality becomes pervasive, the handset market will be able to meet segment-specific demands rapidly, and at low cost. The burgeoning service environment around 3G networks in many major markets places increasing demands on handset requirements. A robust, scalable OS and associated enabling software is crucial to vendors’ product roadmaps, and operators’ ability to deploy differentiated services. Symbian OS enables significant market requirements in phone performance and hardware capabilities that allow handset manufacturers to bring more attractive differentiated phones to market more quickly.” 
