The consolidated financial summary for Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications AB (Sony Ericsson) for the first quarter ended March 31, 2008 is as follows:

Units shipped in the quarter were 22.3 million, a 2% increase compared to the same period last year and in line with our March 19, 2008 interim announcement of 22 million units. Sales for the quarter were Euro 2,702 million, a decrease of 8% on a year ago due to slowing market growth in mid-to-high end phones in markets where Sony Ericsson has a strong presence. Gross margin was one percentage point lower than Q1 2007, reflecting a less favourable product mix. Income before taxes for the quarter was Euro 193 million, which was at the higher end of the range (Euro 150-200 million) we announced on March 19, 2008. This represented a decrease of 47% compared with a year ago, due to higher R&D investments as a percentage of sales, and reflecting that Q1 2007 was a particularly strong first quarter for the company. Net income for the quarter was 48% lower, at Euro 133 million.

“Sony Ericsson continues to invest in expanding its product portfolio to appeal to a wider variety of consumers in both new and existing markets,” said Dick Komiyama, President, Sony Ericsson. “Our product announcements during the first quarter have been well received by the industry, and we expect to see a positive effect from these announcements during the second half of 2008.”

During the quarter, Sony Ericsson added a new sub-brand to its product portfolio with the announcement of the XPERIA™ X1, a high-end multi-media convergence phone based on Windows Mobile®, which will launch in the second half of the year. In addition, the company announced a number of new phones during the quarter to increase the appeal of its brand to a broader audience. These included new high-end Walkman® and HSDPA web phones, such as the W980, W760, Z770 models and also added to its cutting-edge Cyber-shot™ range with models such as the C702 and C902.
Average selling price (ASP) decreased both sequentially and year-on-year due to the impact of softer sales of high-to-mid end models in key markets. Market share for the quarter is estimated to be around 8%, down one percentage point sequentially.
Sony Ericsson made a dividend payment of Euro 470 million during the quarter to the parent companies. A second dividend payment will be made this year.

Sony Ericsson forecasts that the global handset market for 2008 will grow at a rate of around 10% from more than 1.1 billion units in 2007. The majority of this growth is expected to be in emerging markets.

Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson, NEC, NextWave Wireless, Nokia, Nokia Siemens Networks and Sony Ericsson have announced a mutual commitment to a framework for establishing predictable and more transparent maximum aggregate costs for licensing intellectual property rights (IPR) that relate to 3GPP Long Term Evolution and Service Architecture Evolution standards (LTE/SAE). The companies invite all interested parties to join this initiative which is intended to stimulate early adoption of mobile broadband technology across the communications and consumer electronic industries.

The framework is based on the prevalent industry principle of fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory (FRAND) licensing terms for essential patents. This means that the companies agree, subject to reciprocity, to reasonable, maximum aggregate royalty rates based on the value added by the technology in the end product and to flexible licensing arrangements according to the licensors’ proportional share of all standard essential IPR for the relevant product category.

Specifically, the companies support that a reasonable maximum aggregate royalty level for LTE essential IPR in handsets is a single-digit percentage of the sales price. For notebooks, with embedded LTE capabilities, the companies support a single-digit dollar amount as the maximum aggregate royalty level. The parties believe the market will drive the LTE licensing regime to be in accordance with these principles and aggregate royalty levels.

This framework balances the prevailing business conditions relevant for the successful widespread adoption of the LTE standard, which continues its progress toward definitive adoption by the industry in the applicable standards forums and organizations.

Company Quotes

"As our respective companies have now launched R&D efforts and trials for LTE technology, we hope that this initiative will help for a wide adoption of this technology across devices and applications, enabling a wireless lifestyle for consumers and enterprises and creating value for technology providers," said Olivier Baujard, Chief Technology Officer, Alcatel-Lucent.

“The adoption of this initiative will reassure operators of the early widespread adoption of LTE technology throughout the consumer electronics industry,” Ericsson’s Senior Vice President, General Manager and Chief Technology Officer Håkan Eriksson said. “It also confirms Ericsson’s longstanding commitment to the FRAND principles as fundamental to the industry.”

“NEC is excited about this initiative. LTE is a key technology in the transformation of voice-oriented telecom services into data-oriented communication services. In partnership with other LTE technology leaders and vendors, NEC, as both an infrastructure and handset provider, must play a crucial role in establishing a better environment in which to explore the LTE market, and we believe this initiative is an important first step. “ said Dr. Katsumi Emura, Executive General Manager, Intellectual Asset Management Unit, NEC Corporation.

“Today’s devices contain a multitude of different technologies. To ensure all patent holders are treated fairly without stifling the market, it would be preferable for patent holders to offer reasonable terms.” said Ken Stanwood, Executive Vice President Technology and Standards, NextWave Wireless “We are enthusiastic about this effort and hope the concepts will spread to other technologies.”

“The patent licensing market requires basic rules in order to properly develop and function“, said Ilkka Rahnasto, Vice President, Intellectual Property Rights, Nokia. “Today's announcement is a step towards establishing more predictable and transparent licensing costs in a manner that enables faster adoption of new technologies.”

“In order to connect 5 billion people and deal with 100-fold traffic at lowest cost of ownership we need to create economies of scale, “ said Stephan Scholz, CTO of Nokia Siemens Networks, “Mobile broadband implementation using technologies with a predictable, transparent maximum aggregate costs for licensing intellectual property rights will drive global adoption and foster social and economical growth.

By sponsoring these awards, we place great emphasis on China's wireless content
and application development, and show our respect for China's content
developers. At the same time, we hope that, through the award nominations, we
will see more new, innovative and interesting content and applications become
available for Sony Ericsson's mobile phones in China," said James Liu, Manager
of Sony Ericsson Developer World China.

Recently the new, 4.1 Beta version of one of the most well-known mobile Internet Browsers - Opera Mini has been released...

The new release is fantastic. Those features which were presented in the new version, take Opera Mini to the new level despite being a Beta version at the moment :)

As I've already noted, the new release of the Opera Mini includes quite many new features, which make web surfing much easier and comfortable, like automatic completion of Web addresses, attaching files to Web-based email, uploading photos to your blog or other sites, downloading attachments from email for storage on your phone, saving and viewing pages offline, etc.

One of the my favorite features in the new Opera Mini is that, from now on, we don't need to open editor mode for entering web address. The new Opera Mini has new address bar as on desktop browsers. We just need to click on the address bar and locally enter new web address. It also supports automatic completion of web addresses, which makes surfing very comfortable... Except of the dashboard, new address bar is also available in the surfing mode. When you are surfing, just open "Menu", choose "Enter Address" and the new address bar appears on the top of the screen :)

Next novelty is availability of the downloading and uploading files. On phones with JSR-75, we can now upload and download files without being re-routed to the phone’s native browser. We are now able to update blogs while on the go. Upload photos to web sites or social networks and one of the most important features in my opinion, from now on we are able to add attachments to Web-based email and download other non media-rich content to the phone using new Opera Mini.

The next great feature I think is the availability of the saving web pages for viewing it in offline mode. It's very comfortable when we cannot get network reception. (Depending on your phone, you may need to choose a destination folder for storing pages for offline viewing.)

New Opera Mini also lets us search for text within a Web page so we can get to the information we need even quicker than before.

So I guess with this new version, we've got absolutely new and much more powerful browser, which is not only for smartphones :)

As usual Opera Mini is free and if you want to try the new version, you need to go here to download it (Please note that it's only Beta version!!!)

Lennard has been responsible for Sony Ericsson’s business in the Asia-Pacific region since January 2006 and was based at the company’s regional office in Singapore. Before taking up this role, he was in charge of the Sony Ericsson global customer unit for Vodafone and was based in Munich. Lennard initially joined Sony Ericsson (during the early days of the joint venture), as Vice President of Marketing. At that time, he was responsible for launching the Sony Ericsson brand in the Europe, Middle East and Africa region. Lennard joined Sony Ericsson from Sony Europe, in his native country of Holland, where he worked in the areas of both sales and marketing.

Commenting on his recent appointment, Lennard Hoornik said,

The time I have spent as head of our business in Asia-Pacific has been very rewarding and enjoyable. I am delighted to have been appointed the new global Head of Marketing for Sony Ericsson where I can use my regional business experience to strengthen our marketing efforts and position worldwide. I will be relocating back to Europe and based in London.