CES: Sony Ericsson Chief’s Aspirations? Remain In Third Place
You have to hand it to Sony (NYSE: SNE) Ericsson (NSDQ: ERIC) CEO Hideki Komiyama: He doesn’t seem to believe in spin. In an interview with Reuters at CES, Komiyama said he hoped that the struggling company could make it as the world’s number-three handset maker based on its own efforts, rather than getting there because its rivals were also suffering. “We just happened to be number three in the third quarter. I’d like to be No. 3 by ourselves by 2011,” Komiyama told Reuters. In Q3, Sony Ericsson shipped 25.7 million devices, letting it inch ahead of both LG (SEO: 066570) (23 million unit shipped) and Motorola (NYSE: MOT) (25.4 million units shipped) for the third-place slot. Komiyama said he believes that his company “probably held” its 8 percent market share in the fourth quarter, noting, “others are falling apart but we are holding up.”
Lots more after the jump...
Still, Komiyama said the year was clearly going to be a “tough” one. He predicted sales would drop 5-6 percent in the face of faltering consumer demand. Sony Ericsson, meanwhile, would be focusing on its high-end, higher-margin devices, even if it meant having a smaller lineup of products. It won’t be completely eliminating its cheaper phones, since some markets still demand them. And while SE has reduced its research and development budget as part of its cost-savings efforts, Komiyama said it would not further cut the percentage of revenue it puts into R&D to be prepared for a market recovery.
Will SE maintain its narrow hold on third place? It may against Motorola, which is still flailing and doesn’t expect to have any exciting products out until at least mid-year. LG will be tougher to compete against. The Korean company is pushing its mobile division hard, and has its own aggressive goal of reaching a 10 percent global share. It recently revealed it had sold 5 million Viewty phones in the U.S. and Western Europe a year after its launch, with 2.6 million units sold in Europe, Sony Ericsson’s traditional stomping ground. LG is also taking the opposite direction of SE, and says it will focus on lower-end handsets with single-digit margins.
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