Sony Ericsson cut down some loss in Q3, but are still way behind

Just as promised, Sony Ericsson revealed their financial report for Q3 2009 today. Things are still looking pretty gloomy for the company, continuing to lose money, but at least the numbers are better this time around (compared to the previous quarter).

The company has managed to ship 14.1 million handsets, which according to the company analysts, accounts for 5% market share. This is a 0.3 million increase over Q2, but still 11.6 million lower than Q3 2008.

The operating income of the company is in fact a loss of 193 million euro. While this by itself is pretty bad it shows sings of improvement over the 274 million euro loss in Q2 2009.

The average selling price of the Sony Ericsson handsets has dropped to 114 euro, from 122 euro in Q2. However this is still higher than the 109 euro ASP recorded in Q3 of 2008.

The hopes of the troubled company for survival depend on the cost-cutting programs started since mid-2008, which should reduce annual operating expenses by 880 million euro. The effect of those programs however will be felt in the second half of 2010.

In shorter terms we expect the market release sales of the Satio, Aino and Yari to have a positive effect on the company's result for the last quarter of the year. An announcement of the XPERIA X3 would also most probably benefit the profit quite a bit.

For more details and numbers you can find the full report here.