Sunday, January 23, 2011

Sony Ericsson ships 9 million Xperia Android phones, but latest earnings disappoint

Sony Ericsson has just made its financial results for the fourth quarter of 2010 official and the highlight, at least for milestone lovers like us, is the figure of nine million Android-based Xperia handsets shipped since the family's launch. Now, the language used here is important, as Sony loves to report shipments to retailers instead of actual sales, but it's still a pretty grand number of Xperia X10, X10 Mini, X10 Mini Pro, and X8 handsets out and about in our big wide world. Hell, it's even more impressive when you consider that those phones have spent most of their lives riding the ancient Android 1.6 as their operating system. In terms of actual currency figures, however, SE has fallen short of expectations, reporting a moderate €35 million pre-tax profit for Q4, which the company is turning into a positive by noting that it marks its fourth consecutive quarter of being in the black. If the new crop of Xperia Androids are anything to go by, we can probably expect this habit to continue for a good long while.