Sweet Music at Sony Ericsson

Cell phone sales keep rockin' as Sony Ericsson turns up the music.

The mobile-phone joint venture of Sony (SNE Quote) and Ericsson (ERICY Quote) reported blowout numbers Thursday for the second quarter, which ended in June. The Stockholm-based company also boosted its industrywide handset sales forecast for 2006 to 950 million units from 900 million.

Analysts point to Sony Ericsson's sleeker phone designs and the strength of its music players for the company's second-quarter success. The report also gives industry watchers a good temperature reading as mobile phones continue to conquer the world.

For the quarter, Sony Ericsson shipped 15.7 million phones. That's a third more than a year ago and an 18% sequential increase from the first quarter. Revenue for the period was 2.27 billion euros ($2.89 billion), well ahead of analysts' expectations for 2.13 billion euros. Net income in the quarter rose to 143 million euros, from 109 million in the prior quarter, and nearly double the year-ago level. ...