Close on the heels of Nokia reporting its first ever quarterly loss, Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications Ltd has also posted its third straight quarterly loss for the first quarter of 2009.

While pretax loss figures of the company stood at 370 million euros, as against the analysts' estimates of 371 million; the first-quarter net loss was 293 million euros, in comparison to the year-before profit of 133 million euros.

Year-on-year sales figures for Sony Ericsson in the first quarter plummeted 36 per cent to 1.74 billion euros. In 2008-end, the company, the mobile-phone business enterprise of Sony Corp and Ericsson AB, fell to the fourth place in global handset shipments in 2008-end.

Laden by heavy quarterly losses, the London-based Sony Ericsson intends slashing 2,000 more jobs in its attempt to restore profits amid weakening demand, largely because of the consumers vying to grab the touchscreen models from rivals like Apple Inc, the iPhone-maker.

In a statement regarding the proposed lay-offs, Sony Ericsson said that the measure - which entails an implementation cost of 200 million euros - will help the company cut costs by 400 million euros per year by mid-2010. CEO Dick Komiyama said: "We are aligning our business to the new market reality with the aim of bringing the company back to profitability as quickly as possible."