Sony Ericsson Feels Bite of Recession, Needs Over $135 Million

The recession isn’t only taking a bite out of the banking and automotive industries. A lot of people are hurting across the board and telecommunications is no exception. While the guys in Cupertino and Waterloo seem to be doing reasonably well, the same can’t really be said about Sony Ericsson. As it turns out, Sony Ericsson is in quite a bit of trouble and they need to come up with a boatload of cash to stay afloat.

More specifically, Sony Chief Financial Officer Nobuyuki Oneda said last week that the company would need to find itself about $135.5 million by next March if it wanted to keep the mobile wing (Sony Ericsson) to survive this economic downturn. The money can come through bank loans (hard to come by these days), parent company injections, or some other source.

There has already been talk of Sony completely buying out Ericsson’s share in the joint venture, starting to brand the phones as Sony Walkman and Sony Cyber-shot handsets rather than branding them as Sony Ericsson phones. If things continue to go sour, this may be a possibility. Worse yet, they may fold the SE phone department altogether.

Sony Ericsson has been hit hard with a lot of less than fortunate news. They’ve been laying people off, cancellation proposed products, and suffering through less than satisfactory sales figures. What does SE need to do to turn its business around?

Source: Intomobile