The crisis in the mobile phone industry deepened further today as handset maker Sony Ericsson announced a crashing dive into the red and the sacking of another 2000 workers, more than a quarter of its staff.

The latest cuts could hit hard Sony Ericsson's global headquarters at Hammersmith in west London, where 110 staff are based, and the 55 staff in the company's UK sales and marketing office in Farnborough, Hampshire.

Around 500 Sony Ericsson UK workers have already gone in the nine months or will be going soon after the closure of the firm's research and development installation at Warrington in the North-West.

The 2000-strong global job clearout at the company follows 2000 cuts ordered last year. The total cuts will take Sony Ericsson's worldwide workforce down to 5500 from 9500.

The axings come after an appalling opening to 2009 for the company, which has slipped down the rankings of mobile phone handset makers with 6% of the market compared with 8% a year ago.

The company, the product of a defensive 2001 merger of the mobile operations of the Japanese consumer electronics group and the Swedish telecommunications group, is best known for its Walkman mobile phones and its Cyber-shot series.

However, it has been outpaced by the rise of rival technologies, notably first the Blackberry and then the iPhone.

Today its revealed the full horror of its woes, unveiling a €370 million (£325 million) loss for the first three months of the year, as the world stopped buying its mobiles. That follows a €261 million loss in the Christmas trading quarter and compares with a €193 million profit in the first quarter of 2008.

The number of handsets it shipped plunged 35% to 14.5 million, and quarterly sales dropped €1 billion to €1.7 billion.

Sony Ericsson president Dick Komiyama said he expects a further 10% dive in global mobile handset sales this year. He said: “The first quarter of this year has been extremely challenging due to continued weak global demand, a result of continued weak consumer confidence.” The redundancies are expected to cost it a total of €387 million.

Sony Ericsson is not alone. Its arch rival and industry leader Nokia yesterday revealed a 90% plunge in quarterly profits and cost cutting at its business has seen the axing of more than 5000 staff worldwide.

Mobile phone retailers like Carphone Warehouse, whose shares have halved in the past year, are understood to have been slow to order new mobile handsets as they have yet to clear last year's models from their shelves.