Mobile phone maker Sony Ericsson plans to cut around 450 jobs at its site in Lund, Sweden, as part of a plan launched in April to reduce global headcount by around 2,000 by mid-2010.
Around 200 consultants will also leave the company, press spokesman Aldo Liguori told Dow Jones Newswires Wednesday. Staff at the Lund site were informed at an internal meeting Tuesday, Liguori said, and will now be given formal notice.
Sony Ericsson, a joint venture between Sweden’s LM Ericsson Telephone Co. and Japan’s Sony Corp. aims to have around 7,900 employees worldwide by mid-2010, Liguori said.
The site in Lund, which is Sony Ericsson’s main center for product development, currently has around 3,000 employees. Sony Ericsson said in April it would cut around 20% of its workforce after weak customer demand and destocking by distributors and retailers pushed the company to a first-quarter loss.
“We are aligning our business to the new market reality with the aim of bringing the company back to profitability as quickly as possible,” former Chief Executive Dick Komiyama said at the time.
Sony Ericsson has been hard-hit by the economic downturn, in part because of its reliance on mid-end phones at a time when consumer demand shifted to high-end smartphones or cheaper devices.
According to research firm Strategy Analytics, the company’s share of the global handset market fell to 4.9% in the third quarter 2009 from 8.5% a year earlier.
In October, the company posted a EUR164 million net loss for the third-quarter amid falling sales and margins. Sony Ericsson hasn’t made a net profit since the second quarter of 2008.
Still, it hopes that a range of new devices including the recently launched Satio and the Xperia X10 smartphone which is due to start shipping in early 2010, will boost its sales and help it return to profitability.
[Via]
