Sony Ericsson Struggles

Handset maker Sony Ericsson said its sales for the fourth quarter were approximately1.3 billion euros, down 16% year-on-year. The company said: "Fourth quarter sales were negatively impacted by macroeconomic challenges in advanced economies contributing to weaker holiday sales, and certain component shortages from the flooding in Thailand in late October and early November 2011. Xperia smartphones accounted for approximately 80% of total sales in the fourth quarter."

Sony Ericsson estimatesd that the global smartphone market for the full year 2011 increased by 60% in volume to 463 million units. Sony Ericsson also forecast strong growth in the smartphone market in 2012. source: Sony Ericsson statement

Motorola Mobility Sees Flat Sales

Motorola Mobility Holdings, which is being acquired by Google, estimated its sales were 3.4 billion US dollars in the fourth quarter of 2011, compared with 3.4 billion dollars the year earlier. It said its estimates are based on shipments of approximately 10.5 million mobile devices, of which approximately 5.3 million were smartphones. In the same quarter of 2010, Motorola shipped 11.3 million mobile devices.

Motorola Mobility said its fourth-quarter results "were impacted by the increased competitive environment in the mobile cevice business and higher legal costs associated with ongoing Intellectual Property (IP) litigations." source: Motorola statement

HTC Stumbles

HTC Corporation, a leading smartphone maker, said its revenues fell 2.49% year-on-year in the fourth quarter of 2011, to 101.42 billion Taiwanese dollars (3.36 billion US dollars). HTC didn't give a reason for the decline. For the whole of 2011, its revenues were up 67% to 465.8 billion Taiwanese dollars. source: HTC statement

Amazon Sells One Million Kindles A Week

Amazon.com said that, throughout December 2011, its customers "purchased well over one million Kindle devices per week." The online retailer also said that "the new Kindle family held the top three spots on the Amazon.com best seller charts – #1: Kindle Fire, #2: Kindle Touch, #3: Kindle."  source: Amazon statement

Christmas Seals Smartphone Surge

In 2011, Apple’s App Store is on pace to exceed 10 billion downloads, which will double the cumulative number of downloads earned across 2008, 2009 and 2010, according to Flurry Analytics. Android Market reached more than 10 billion cumulative downloads in December, up from three billion in May, Flurry said. source: Flurry blog entry

RIM Predicts 12%-18% Sales Fall

RIM said it expects its revenue for the quarter ending March 3, 2012  to be between 4.6 billion and 4.9 billion US dollars on the back of BlackBerry smartphone shipments of between 11 million and 12 million units. Revenue in the equivalent quarter last year was 5.6 billion dollars and BlackBerry shipmentrs were 14.9 million.

RIM's co-CEOs said: “RIM continues to have strong technology, unique service capabilities and a large installed base of customers, and we are more determined than ever to capitalize on our strengths to overcome the recent execution challenges surrounding product launches and the resulting financial performance." source: RIM statement

Tablet Growth Tempered

Device manufacturers shipped 18.1 million media tablets into the channel in the third quarter, according to analyst firm IDC. That represents an increase of 264.5% from the same quarter last year, but is 5.8% below IDC's original forecast of 19.2 million units.

IDC said Apple had a 61.5% worldwide market share (down from 63.3% in the second quarter).  Samsung was number two with 5.6% and HP third with 5%. Barnes & Noble took the number four spot with a 4.5% market share. ASUS rounded out the top five with a 4% share. source: IDC statement

RIM Warns of Sales Stumble

RIM said it shipped approximately 14.1 million BlackBerry smartphones in the quarter ended November 26, 2011. In the equivalent quarter last year, RIM sold 14.2 million Blackberries. RIM added that it sold approximately 150,000 BlackBerry PlayBook tablets in the quarter and sell-through to end customers, based on RIM’s internal data, was higher than this amount.

However, the Ontario-based company warned that adjusted revenue in the quarter, excluding a charge against revenue of approximately 50 million US dollars related to the service outage that occurred in the quarter, is expected to be slightly lower than the previously guided range of between 5.3 billion and 5.6 billion dollars, "reflecting product mix and the impact of PlayBook sell-through programs in the quarter." In the equivalent quarter last year, RIM's sales were 5.5 billion dollars.

RIM said it is still in the process of finalizing its outlook for the current quarter, but based on preliminary estimates, RIM expects unit shipments in the fourth quarter to be below third quarter levels. source: RIM statement