On Friday, Sony Ericsson posted a large loss of $382.4 million USD, adding that phone shipments fell 35 percent year-on-year, to 14.5 million units between January and March.
Additionally, the company will cut 2000 more jobs on top of the 2000 already cut in the past year.
Officials estimated that due to the global economic recession, the entire mobile phone market will shrink 10 percent in 2009, with just about 1.2 billion phones shipped for the year.
Perhaps more critical for the future of the company is the fact that they have lost 2 percent market share in the past year, dropping to 6 percent, and being surpassed by LG, Samsung and possibly Motorola. Notably, Sony Ericsson has lost giant amount of market share in the high-end market.
Result for: economic recession
The PC retailer Systemax, which recently purchased Tiger Direct and CompUSA, is planning to buy the Circuit City name and brand, and is willing to pay up to $6.5 million USD for it. With the acquisition, Systemax also gets to run the Circuit City website.
Systemax has recently restarted 30 CompUSA retail outlets, with promises that demo units will be less restricted than retail rivals such as Best Buy, including free Internet on all display units.
The company is hoping to gain retail position while taking advantage of the bad management of other companies, which has been elevated by the ongoing global economic recession.
Result for: economic recession
Matt Stone and Trey Parker, the creators of the extremely popular South Park cartoon, have signed an agreement with Netflix that will have the first nine seasons of the show streamed through Netflix’s Watch Instantly streaming service.
The deal will give Netflix exclusive rights to the show’s first 181 episodes, added Netflix spokesman Steve Swasey, although neither party elaborated on the financials of the deal.
Over the past year, Netflix has continued to add services and content to its streaming library, which now boasts more than 12,000 movies and TV episodes. The streaming library is now available through TiVo devices, on Samsung Blu-ray players, on LG Blu-ray players and through the Microsoft Xbox 360.
The company added recently that despite the current economic recession, they have hit 10 million subscribers while posting a 45 percent profit increase year on year.
