Sony Ericsson may ask for $136.5m bailout
updated 04:15 pm EDT, Tue May 19, 2009
Sony Ericsson Wants 136m
Sony today said that its cellphone joint-partnership Sony Ericsson is likely to ask for 100 million Euros ($136.5 million) before the end of its current fiscal year in March 2010. The injection, which could come from either Sony or Ericsson themselves, would be prompted both by Sony Ericsson's own struggling health as well as Sony's own dropping sales, which resulted in its first loss in 14 years and has reduced the Japanese firm's ability to support its phone offshoot. How Sony Ericsson will raise the funds will be decided by the two parent companies.
Such actions are regarded as emergency steps to save Sony Ericsson. Financial losses widened at the company in the first quarter of 2009 and were driven mostly by dramatically reduced phone market share as the handset maker has given up share at the low end, where Korean companies like LG and Samsung often thrive, as well as at the high end by smartphones like BlackBerries and the iPhone. Aside from the powerful but poor-selling XPERIA X1, the company has no modern smartphones and won't improve its share until the Symbian-based Idou and future Android phones ship from late 2009 onwards.
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Grizzled Veteran
Joined: Aug 2002
Bailout??
That's not a bailout. When one company that owns a another company has to pay money into it, that's simply a price of doing business--not a bailout. The misleading title tries to indicate that they are asking for a government bailout, which they are NOT doing.