Mobile telephone maker Sony Ericsson on Friday said it would cut some 2,000 jobs after it posted a break-even result for the second quarter of last year.
Pre-tax income for the quarter was 8 million euros (US$12.6 million), compared with 327 million euros for the corresponding period last year, the group said.
The net result was 6 million euros for the quarter, a 97 percent drop year-on-year.
Group turnover was 2.82 billion euros, down 9 percent from the second quarter of last year, Sony Ericsson said.
After the report was released, Sony Ericsson chief executive Dick Komiyama told reporters that some 2,000 jobs were to be cut. The group has some 12,000 employees worldwide.
Komiyama said in a statement the group planned to introduce savings of 300 million euros.
The group had said on June 27 it expected lower profits and sales amid tighter competition and a slowdown in demand for its mid to high-end phones.
Sony Ericsson said it sold 24.4 million handsets during the quarter, compared with 24.9 million handsets sold during the second quarter of last year.
The average selling price of Sony Ericsson handsets in the quarter dropped to 116 euros, compared with 125 euros in second quarter of last year. In the first quarter of this year, the average selling price was 121 euros.
Sony Ericsson estimated that the global handset market this year would grow around 10 percent from more than 1.1 billion units last year, driven largely by emerging markets.
The group’s share of the global market was estimated at 8 percent.
Sony Ericsson said it expected “challenging market conditions” to remain for the rest of the year, not the least in the third quarter.
IN THE AIR: While most companies said they were committed to North American operations, some added that production and costs would depend on the outcome of a US trade probe Leading local contract electronics makers Wistron Corp (緯創), Quanta Computer Inc (廣達), Inventec Corp (英業達) and Compal Electronics Inc (仁寶) are to maintain their North American expansion plans, despite Washington’s 20 percent tariff on Taiwanese goods. Wistron said it has long maintained a presence in the US, while distributing production across Taiwan, North America, Southeast Asia and Europe. The company is in talks with customers to align capacity with their site preferences, a company official told the Taipei Times by telephone on Friday. The company is still in talks with clients over who would bear the tariff costs, with the outcome pending further
A proposed 100 percent tariff on chip imports announced by US President Donald Trump could shift more of Taiwan’s semiconductor production overseas, a Taiwan Institute of Economic Research (TIER) researcher said yesterday. Trump’s tariff policy will accelerate the global semiconductor industry’s pace to establish roots in the US, leading to higher supply chain costs and ultimately raising prices of consumer electronics and creating uncertainty for future market demand, Arisa Liu (劉佩真) at the institute’s Taiwan Industry Economics Database said in a telephone interview. Trump’s move signals his intention to "restore the glory of the US semiconductor industry," Liu noted, saying that
NEGOTIATIONS: Semiconductors play an outsized role in Taiwan’s industrial and economic development and are a major driver of the Taiwan-US trade imbalance With US President Donald Trump threatening to impose tariffs on semiconductors, Taiwan is expected to face a significant challenge, as information and communications technology (ICT) products account for more than 70 percent of its exports to the US, Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) president Lien Hsien-ming (連賢明) said on Friday. Compared with other countries, semiconductors play a disproportionately large role in Taiwan’s industrial and economic development, Lien said. As the sixth-largest contributor to the US trade deficit, Taiwan recorded a US$73.9 billion trade surplus with the US last year — up from US$47.8 billion in 2023 — driven by strong
STILL UNCLEAR: Several aspects of the policy still need to be clarified, such as whether the exemptions would expand to related products, PwC Taiwan warned The TAIEX surged yesterday, led by gains in Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), after US President Donald Trump announced a sweeping 100 percent tariff on imported semiconductors — while exempting companies operating or building plants in the US, which includes TSMC. The benchmark index jumped 556.41 points, or 2.37 percent, to close at 24,003.77, breaching the 24,000-point level and hitting its highest close this year, Taiwan Stock Exchange (TWSE) data showed. TSMC rose NT$55, or 4.89 percent, to close at a record NT$1,180, as the company is already investing heavily in a multibillion-dollar plant in Arizona that led investors to assume
RSS