Ericsson

Apple won last year's smartphone wars, according to data released today by Gartner.

Other reports have pointed to Samsung as the leading vendor in 2011, but the research firm placed Apple on top with a 19 percent market share overall, barely half a point higher than Samsung's share.

Driven by the iPhone 4S, the fourth quarter was especially strong for Apple with a 23.8 percent share amid sales of 37 million iPhones. And many of those sales came outside the U.S., helping boost the industry as a whole.

"Western Europe and North America led most … Read more

Apple and Samsung together hoovered up more than 95 percent of mobile phone profits last quarter, leaving little left for other players, says Canaccord Genuity analyst Michael Walkley.

Actually, there wasn't a whole lot left for Samsung, either, once Apple was done with things.

With strong demand for the iPhone 4S, Apple alone took home around 80 percent of all mobile phone profits in the fourth quarter, up from just 56 percent in the third quarter, according to the analyst. Yet the company holds just 8.1 percent of the global mobile phone market.

At the same time, Samsung'… Read more

Qualcomm, along with Ericsson, has successfully completed a major hurdle that will enable Voice-over-LTE (VoLTE).

The technology, called Single Radio Voice Call Continuity, or SRVCC, enables continuity of service by seamlessly switching to a WCDMA network when a consumer on a VoLTE call leaves the LTE network's coverage area, Qualcomm said.

Qualcomm and Ericsson have completed the first voice call handover from an LTE mobile network to a WCDMA network using SRVCC.

A Snapdragon-powered Ericsson device, using Qualcomm's Snapdragon S4 MSM8960 3G/LTE multimode processor, will be on demonstration at Qualcomm's Mobile World Congress booth, Qualcomm said. … Read more

Sony's takeover over of Ericsson's stake in their decade-long joint venture is well underway.

A nod from the European Commission this week removes one more impediment for Sony to dissolve its mobile partnership with Ericsson and assume full control.

Sony announced the $1.47 billion deal in October 2011 as part of a bid to more tightly steer the company's "four-screen strategy," which includes smartphones.

At CES earlier this month, Sony revealed several Android smartphones bearing its name, including the Sony Xperia S and Sony Xperia Ion.

With this hurdle out of its way, Sony … Read more

Sony Ericsson's last financial results before the joint venture ends have shown massive losses, largely due to plummeting feature-phone sales.

The London-based mobile device maker's results for the fourth quarter of 2011 and the full year, released today, revealed a 20 percent year-on-year drop in overall shipments. Added to component shortages due to the Thai floods, and significant restructuring costs ahead of Sony's buyout of the partnership with Ericsson, this led to net losses of 247 million euros ($316 million) for the year of 2011 and 207 million euros ($265 million) for the final quarter.

The losses … Read more

Sony has plenty of Android in store for consumers in 2012, including at least a dozen products in the first nine months alone.

According to a newly leaked road map, the company already has code names, launch dates, and pricing for the 12 Android handsets. Starting with last week's Sony Xperia S and running through September, the leak--should it prove legitimate--hints at a pair of flagship models.

We should expect to see the Xperia S launch in March or April, followed shortly after by three additional models (Kumquat, Nypon, and Pepper). With prices ranging from $335 to $475, or … Read more

The matrimonial relationship between Sony and Android may not be as monogamous as we all believed.

According to NokiaWP, leaked photos of a few new Sony phones included one phone running Windows Phone 7. The phone still brandishes the Sony Ericsson brand, so it's safe to assume that this prototype started out as an old endeavor back before Sony bought out Ericsson's stake of the company in October 2011.

In that same month, the president of Sony, Bert Nordberg, told The Wall Street Journal that although he was "curious about Windows Phone," he wouldn't feel "comfortable investing in a platform" that wasn't what he believed to be as good as Android.

That line of thinking, along with Sony's current family of Android-only Xperia phones (which includes the highly anticipated Sony Xperia S), gave us all the green light to assume that the manufacturer wasn't interested in other types of operating systems at all.

But perhaps this prototype says otherwise.… Read more

LAS VEGAS--Nearly hidden away at CES was a $149 Sony SmartWatch (due in March) that doubles as a Bluetooth command center for Android phones.

Featuring brushed chrome edges, the 1.3-inch OLED (65k color) touch screen features Bluetooth 3.0 and is compatible with Android phones from Sony, HTC, Motorola, Samsung, and others. You may remember its predecessor, the Live View accessory that Sony Ericsson released in late 2010.

The dust and splash proof SmartWatch is essentially the same story. The updated version is sleeker in appearance (and about 0.3-inches thick), has an accelerometer, can vibrate, and will launch … Read more

LAS VEGAS - Imagine digitally transferring business cards with a handshake or transferring video shot on your phone to your TV simply by touching your set-top box.

Telecom equipment maker Ericsson is showing off technology at the Consumer Electronics Show here this week that allows your body to act as a connection between devices transmitting bits from a smartphone or other mobile device to a receiver such as a TV or stereo system. The company has a demonstration set up at its booth here.

Hans Vestberg, CEO of Ericsson, who gave a keynote speech here Wednesday, demonstrated how it works … Read more