STOCKHOLM - Sony Ericsson, the world's fifth-largest mobile phone maker, said second-quarter pretax earnings more than doubled to 211 million euros ($268.9 million), beating expectations, and raised its forecast for 2006 industry sales.

Sony Ericsson's sales and market share have improved steadily on the back of phones that play music and take pictures. Its products include a phone branded with Sony's Cyber-shot camera, with 3.2 megapixels, as well as a line of Walkman music phones.

The firm, owned by Sweden's Ericsson and Japan's Sony Corp., had been expected by a Reuters poll to report a pretax profit of 156 million euros after 87 million euros in the same period of 2005.

The group said in Thursday's earnings announcement that growth in the handset market had continued to outpace expectations and it raised its forecast for global handset sales this year to more than 950 million units from a previous outlook of above 900 million.

Second-quarter sales came in at 2.27 billion euros versus a forecast of 2.09 billion. Its handset sales amounted to 15.7 million units compared with an expected 14.3 million.

"The second quarter has seen Sony Ericsson both announce and start to ship a wide variety of products, confirming the company's ability to compete, capture market share and profitably grow the business," Sony Ericsson President Miles Flint said in a statement.

The company said its average selling price per phone slipped quarter-on-quarter due to the launch of low-priced models, which expanded Sony Ericsson's position compared with its previous concentration on the top end of the market.