Photo: Sony Ericsson

There was a time not too long ago when Sony Ericsson, as a company, was teetering. Many thought the mobile phones manufacturer may have to transform radically if it kept haemorrhaging cash the way it has been. Well, in a Rocky-esque moment, Sony Ericsson has risen yet again to deliver better-than-expected profits.

Go, Adrian! Adrian!

While historic competitors like the powerful Nokia slash their forecasted earnings, Sony Ericsson has been sitting on costs as well as revising its product mix to favour smartphones over feature phones. This Sony Ericsson smartphone strategy has worked out, as Reuters reports, with the average selling price across devices being €160 as opposed to Sony Ericsson’s forecast of €134. This 26 euros per handset difference pushed Q2 pretax profit all the way up to 31 million euros. This is a €334 million difference over the €283 million Sony Ericsson lost in the same quarter last year. Literally, like Rocky, the company seemed down and out, and found something extra somewhere, posting a profit two quarters running now.

Great hands, too

Photo: Sony Ericsson

And to be fair to the quality of Sony Ericsson smartphones, this improved financial performance is well deserved. Q1 saw the company release its Vivaz smartphones and Xperia X10, but it wasn’t until the Q2 shipping of the Xperia X10 Mini and the Xperia X10 Mini Pro that Sony Ericsson began flexing its muscle. We liked the Xperia X10 Mini Pro so much it made our list of the top three mobile phones released in 2010. Sony Ericsson has once again began showing what made this joint venture a threat for other mobile phones makers.

All in all, Sony Ericsson expect growth in 2010 to trump that of 2009, and these surprising results over the disappointment of Nokia’s forecast revision and RIM’s disappointing first quarter may give this ‘rank outsider’ a chance. Cue ‘Eye of the Tiger’, please.

Have you any Sony Ericsson smartphones or would you consider purchasing any?

Photo: Sony Ericsson

Sony Ericsson, in conjunction with carrier 3, has a peculiar promotion to show their new Xperia X10 mobile phone comes with two free months premium access to Spotify.

Traveling artists

The promotion sees artists putting together playlists for the music service, based on their recent travels. These artists include some of Britain’s biggest stars, such as Keane, The Stereophonics and Ellie Goulding.

Photo: Spotify

The peculiarity of this promotion is Sony Ericsson’s assumption that people care for these playlists. Sure, playlists created by your favourite artists are more interesting than those by your friends, but this has been an iTunes feature – if one can even call it that – for years. Where the various companies involved will succeed with this promotion is if people actually care what certain musicians listen to, if it sells more Xperia X10 handsets and if Spotify can convert these free users to premium members.

Inch by inch, Spotify gains

Spotify, who have been on a tear recently in terms of getting premium subscribers, who pay £9.99 for the unlimited service, to sign up for the service, is quickly becoming Europe’s dominant streaming music service. While in North America, Rhapsody and Pandora are legitimate contenders, until Spotify arrives out there in full, the company intends on solidifying its lead in Britain and throughout Europe.

Inch by inch, Sony Ericsson slides

Even though the Xperia X10 is one of Sony Ericsson’s best handsets in a long while, the improvements aren’t enough to close the gap Apple and HTC are opening up on other Smartphones.

What is a big deal is that Sony Ericsson is profitable again, and though it’s been a while since this handset manufacturer was the ‘it’ company, profitability is definitely the first step to complete recovery. And if Sony Ericsson can’t get the mojo back on their lonesome, there’s nothing to lose by sharing the light shining on current golden boys (and girls) Spotify.

Photo: Sony Ericsson

It’s taken a few weeks to actually settle in, but Sony Ericsson’s last quarter was a profitable one, the first such result in nearly two years thanks partly to aggressive cost cutting and Xperia X10 sales.

Back again, almost

Photo: Sony Ericsson

The company posted Q1 profits of €21 million (£18 million), a far cry from analysts’ anticipated losses of €128 million (£110 million). What makes these results particularly notable is that the same time last year saw losses totaling €370 million.

Trickery does the job

So, considering those sickening losses, how exactly did Sony come back? Well, firstly, the company slashed its head count, with Sony Ericsson losing 2,000 employees and shutting down four facilities, which is always a viable short-term solution for satisfying Wall Street. In addition, Sony Ericsson managed to up the average price of its mobile phones from €120 the year prior to €134 now. But accompanying that average handset price increase is a sales plummet, where at the same time last year the company moved 14.5 million units, this time round they only managed to move 10.5 million units. In other words, they sold one-third fewer handsets than they did this time last year.

Slite of hand stuff this, not necessarily indicative of a healthy business.

What’s next?

Photo: Apple

The bulk of this success (and average price increased) comes on the back of the so-so received Xperia X10. While that handset has been riddled with less bugs than Sony’s recent products and would, in another period, be considered a truly remarkable handset, it had the unenviable task of squaring up with HTC and Apple, who are the clear leaders in the smartphone race.

Sony, a shareholder in Sony Ericsson, is rumoured to be working on iPhone and iPad competitors, which, if executed properly given the company’s PSP and Playstation lineage, could be the killer products the Xperia X10 just falls short of.

Photo: Sony Ericsson

Sony has introduced a new phone into their range – the Xperia X10. It has a smart, sleek and rather original design, but what’s pretty impressive is the big 4-inch LED screen. The full colour touch screen displays all the important widgets like Timescape which gives you automatic updates of Facebook, My Space and Twitter sites, and a quick scroll up menu. The Xperia X10 has 3G connectivity and uploads to websites quickly, and the change from vertical to horizontal is done very smoothly with no delays.

What’s it got?

The Xperia X10 uses a 1GHz Snapdragon core processor, making it a powerful and effective phone. The logs are kept on a system called ‘Spline’ which allows you to scroll up and down to check messages, social networking updates and phone calls. The Spline may be quite slow when loading all the items, but speeds up once the process gets going. The Sony Ericsson X10 runs on Android version 1.6, not the highest, but seeing that Google keeps on installing new versions, it’s difficult to keep up. The mobile phone is compact and a bit bulky at 13 mm thick, but is still light enough to carry around.

Photo: Sony Ericsson

The new Sony Ericsson mobile phone has fully integrated sites like YouTube, Google Maps and Gmail. The X10 has an 8.1 mega pixel camera, giving it the highest res count among all Android phones. The camera has loads of customisable options like white balance control, smile detection, autofocus modes, multiple metering and more. The only photo feature it struggles with is macro capturing, and can only shoot images up to 4 inches away. The Xperia X10 has excellent sound quality, especially while on a phone call, almost no distracting noise can be heard, and sound is very clear and precise. The speakerphone also works well, and is ideal for conference calls.

Encountering a few problems

The X10 has great quality for both video and audio displays, but may be a bit slow once all your applications and websites have been calibrated onto the phone. The keypad has a few problems and freezes then starts again which is rather bizarre, but on the bright side the keypad can be changed because of the Android technology. There is no .com button which may throw some people off, and the X10 goes retro with zoom buttons in place of the now popular pinch to zoom feature.

Already released

With a powerful processor, cool widgets and designs, the X10 has potential, but it seems that Sony Ericsson just tried to do too much in one phone, and that makes it slow. The camera is a huge bonus, and photo enthusiasts will enjoy the options and clear picture of a regular point-and- shoot camera. The audio application is also really cool and displays all the album art you could wish for. Sony has tried and tried again with their X1 and X2 Android phones and hasn’t yet succeeded. But the Xperia X10 has been improved and comes close to a great phone; it just needs a few changes here and there. The Sony Ericsson X10 was released in March 2010 and costs £500.