Sony Ericsson plans to lay off a further 2,000 employees. This coming in the wake of deeper quarterly financial losses.

Announced on Friday, the staff cuts add to the reductions the company had outlined in July. They came the same day that Sony Ericsson reported its first-quarter earnings results showing the company had a pretax loss of 358 million euros ($467 million) for the first three months of 2009. The company’s earnings slipped into the red in the third quarter of 2008 with its losses have deepened ever since.

Sony Ericsson noted that it now has a 6 percent share of global handset market, down two% points, or 25% since the previous quarter. It also said it expects the global handset market to contract by 10% over the course of 2009. Sony Ericsson President Hideki “Dick” Komiyama said, “the management intends to pursue an additional cost-saving program targeting a further annual operating-expense reduction of 400 million euros, to be completed by mid-2010. We are aligning our business to the new market reality, with the aim of bringing the company back to profitability as quickly as possible.”

[via ZDNet]