Sony Ericsson makes record Q4 profit

Sony Ericsson, the world's fourth-largest mobile phone maker, said on Wednesday it had made a forecast-beating record pretax profit in the fourth quarter and raised its forecast for 2006 total industry handset sales.

Owned by Sweden's Ericsson (ERICb.ST: Quote, Profile, Research) and Japan's Sony Corp. (6758.T: Quote, Profile, Research), the group reported pretax profit of 502 million euros, compared with the average forecast in a Reuters poll of 428 million euros after 206 million in the same period of 2005.

"Sony Ericsson increased market share during the quarter due to the continued success of products such as the K800/K790 Cyber-shot phone and Walkman phone line-up," it said in a statement.

It raised its estimate for industry handset sales to 980 million units for 2006 from a previous forecast of 950 million.

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