Cellphone industry looking to go greener

HELSINKI (Reuters) - Cellphone maker Sony Ericsson unveiled on Thursday two handset models it said are more eco-friendly, and said it expects the new Naite model to be one of its key volume drivers in coming quarters.

The world's largest consumer electronics sector by volume, the cellphone industry is looking increasingly at how to tap consumers' increasing interest in more environmentally friendly phones.

The new Sony Ericsson models -- the more advanced C901 GreenHeart and a mass-market model Naite -- will be sold in smaller packages and have user manuals that are electronic. The devices use more recycled materials and consume less energy.

The company said it aims to roll out similar features across its portfolio in 2010 and 2011.

"We are not aiming at a niche segment. We are taking this to mainstream and to a bigger audience," Mats Pellback-Scharp, head of sustainability at Sony Ericsson told Reuters in an interview.

"Naite is the lowest cost 3G phone in Sony Ericsson's portfolio and we expect it to be one of the biggest volume drivers in end-2009 to early 2010," Pellback-Scharp said.

Money-losing Sony Ericsson, the world's fifth-biggest handset maker, is in need of new models to renew its offering since the appeal of the years-old Sony-branded Cybershot cameraphones and Walkman music phones has faded.

The role of greener products is increasing rapidly in the cellphone industry, with a recent ABI Research survey saying nearly half of U.S. consumers are likely to be influenced by suppliers' green credentials when purchasing devices.

Sony Ericsson said on Thursday it targets a cut of 20 percent of its carbon dioxide emissions by 2015.

The handset industry is closely followed by environmental organisations around the world due to its large scale. More than 1 billion phones are sold globally each year, which requires the use of sales boxes, add-ons and tonnes of rare raw materials.

Samsung Electronics and ZTE launched phone models in February which use solar power.

The world's top cellphone maker, Nokia, started to renew its packaging in 2006, and has said it saved 100 million euros (87.7 million pounds) in less than a year.

Sony Ericsson said its new models will use at least 50 percent recycled plastics -- similar to Nokia's 3110 Evolve model, which the Finnish firm introduced last year.

Last year Nokia's chief executive, Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, showed a phone made fully of recycled materials at the Mobile World Congress trade show, but the research project has not made it into production.

"It looks three to five years out to see how recycled materials themselves might be used to make devices. We hope that elements from this research project will be things we can take into production and deploy across our product range in the coming years," said a Nokia spokeswoman.

(Reporting by Tarmo Virki, editing by Matthew Lewis and Rupert Winchester)