Sony Ericsson

Sony may have not become a small-time player in the mobile market but there was a time when it eclipsed Samsung and went head to head with the old Nokia and Motorola. That was during its time as Sony Ericsson, when it launched notable (Symbian/UIQ-based) smartphones as well as flaunting the still popular Xperia line. It also dared to come out with innovations that may have been far ahead of its time, like the Xperia Play gaming phone and this VAIO-branded smartphone that has now come to light as a canceled prototype.

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Sony Ericsson has announced that the partnership between Xperia and Box has been extended for another year, lasting until the end of 2013. This comes after 2011's year-end announcement of the initial partnership, which lasted one year and was scheduled to end of the 31st of this month. Now Xperia owners who sign up for Box by the end of next year will get 50GB of free lifetime storage space.

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If you can’t get the carriers onboard with your new smartphones, why not just sell them unlocked directly to customers? That’s what Sony is hoping to do with the NXT series. The phones have been available in Europe for the past month or two and are just now hitting the United States. Sony will be offering the Sony Xperia S, Xperia P, and Xperia U fully unlocked in a range of different colors from Sony stores and at Newegg.

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Sony promised that its entire 2011 line of Android smartphones would be receiving an update to Ice Cream Sandwich, and while it’s been a long wait, the company is starting to deliver. Sony has taken to its user forums to announce that the rest of the 2011 line should be seeing the ICS updates very shortly, with Xperia Arc and Xperia Neo users already reporting that the upgrade has arrived.

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Changes are afoot at Sony: new CEO, new PS Vita on the market, and a new opportunity to demonstrate the company can deliver on its "four-screen" strategy of convergence. Until now, that strategy has been a vague ambition to sell users a Sony TV, phone, tablet and PC. Now, though, with the PS Vita finally reaching US buyers, part of Sony's overall gameplan is starting to become clear. Vita OS is the "thin edge of the wedge" on gaming hardware, Yoshio Matsumoto, director of business at SCE, confirmed last week. Meanwhile, Sony Ericsson is no more, and Sony has sole control of the rudder: the company promised nothing but smartphones for 2012, but that doesn't mean Sony won't sacrifice Android in favor of a platform - and an ecosystem - that it alone controls.

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Sony has finalized its acquisition of the Sony Ericsson smartphone business, sidelining Ericsson into an IP cross-licensing agreement and renaming the venture Sony Mobile Communications. The Japanese company now says it plans to "accelerate business integration" of the smartphone division into its other electronics businesses, part of the "four screen" strategy Sony sees as its best hope at challenging Apple, Samsung and other rivals.

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It appears that with the relative success of the Sony PlayStation Vita in its relatively limited release thus far, the operating system aboard has garnered some attention in regards to a possible mobile phone port. When asked this past November what the possibility was for the operating system to be brought to mobile phones was, mister Yoshio Matsumoto, Director of Business and Sony Computer Entertainment SVP noted that though the Vita OS was made for the Vita itself, its applicability was certainly made with other devices in mind, this being the "thin edge of the wedge" for the operating system.

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If you bought a phone at a SonyStyle store last year, it was most likely a Sony Ericsson Xperia phone. The Xperia name is trying to join the ranks of Evo, Droid, and Razr in the world of high-value Android brands. Later this month, we'll see a whole new slate of Sony Xperia devices when they're on display at the Mobile World Congress in Spain. Wait; did you catch the big difference in what we just wrote? It's "Sony Xperia," not "Sony Ericsson Xperia."

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This week the EU's list of mergers and takeovers includes no less than an approval for Japan's Sony to acquire sole control of the mobile phone company called Sony Ericsson. This company had thus far been co-owned by both Sony and Ericsson, and has been approved on the 26th of January to be owned only be Sony. This comes just one week after the company Sony Ericsson posted a $318 million USD loss in their 4th quarter earnings report.

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Earlier this month we got a chance to peek at one of Sony Ericsson's newest hero devices, the Xperia Ion, complete with AT&T LTE speeds to back up its collection of top of the line specifications in a smartphone body. What we're seeing here is that the device will cost you something like $570 in pre-order dollars to get the whole device off-contract. What that money gets you is some rather enticing bits and pieces that make up one monster of a phone.

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A new Sony smartphone has been spied in the wild for the first time. In the past, the weird Kumquat name has been tied to a new device coming to market in roadmap leaks. This is thought to be the first photo of that Kumquat device in the wild. The device is said to have a 3.5-inch screen, and it is a bit smaller than other Sony smartphones already in the line.

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Sony Ericsson has reported dismal Q4 2011 financial performance, with a pre-tax loss of €247m ($318m) amid "intense competition" along with the poor economic climate. The company - which will be rolled into Sony later this quarter - has plenty of blame to share around: as well as a strong showing from its rivals and the general economic doldrums, Sony Ericsson reckons price erosion, restructuring charges and the effects from the flooding in Thailand are all at fault.

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