Sony Ericsson has doubled quarterly profits and
predicted strong sales growth for the year.
The company, jointly owned by Sweden’s Ericsson and Japan’s
Sony, said pre-tax profits for the three months up to March were
151m euros (£104m), compared with 70m euros a year ago for the same
quarter.
Sales also increased to 1.99bn euros from the 1.29bn seen a year
earlier, said the company.
Growth had been fuelled by the company’s new Walkman media
player phones and consumer demand for camera phones, said Sony
Ericsson. The firm also said it had been able to sell its phones at
a higher average price.
Sony Ericsson said it expected that the total global mobile
phone market would see sales of 900 million handsets this year
compared to 780 million in 2005.
It said it had shipped 13.3 million handsets of its own in the
first quarter, which was 41% up on the same period a year ago.