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Samsung, which reported earnings today, also said it would stop reporting sales data and forecasts for its mobile phones and tablets, “probably due to its continuing legal battle with Apple”, analysts tell The Wall Street Journal. The company did not provide phone or tablet sales data in today’s earnings report, the decision Robert Yi, Samsung’s chief of investor relations, said in a conference call with analysts was due to competitive reasons:

As competition intensifies, there are increased risks that the information we provide may adversely affect our own businesses.

And in the earnings release Samsung only wrote that “shipments of mobile handsets increased in the high-single-digit range quarter-on-quarter”. Per latest IDC and ABI Research second-quarter cell phone survey, Samsung shipped…

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Motorola Mobility reported June quarter earnings today, nearly hitting Wall Street estimates with the reported GAAP net loss of $56 million, 19 cents a share. Revenues for the quarter topped $3.3 billion and non-GAAP earnings were nine cents a share. One of the noteworthy highlights includes shipments of 400,000 Xoom tablets, although the company wouldn’t divulge actual sell-through numbers. Xoom shipments amount to some 2.65% June tablet market share, per Strategy Analytics’s cumulative figures.The company also shipped eleven million mobile devices in total, including 4.4 million Android smartphones. Analyst Tomi Ahonen wrote on Twitter that Android shipments amount to an eight percent market share, making Motorola “8th biggest smartphone maker and 5th biggest Android”.

Xoom aren’t bad at all, actually a bit higher than the 300,000 units investors were expecting. Furthermore, the Xoom, Motorola’s inaugural Honeycomb tablet, arrived to market with little or no support from third-party developers plus devices from rivals ensued soon thereafter. Motorola benefited from an expanded distribution of the Atrix 4G smartphone and Motorola Xoom tablets in Latin America, China, Korea and Europe. They also rolled out four new smartphones in China. Moving forward, the company previously pledged to launch ten new devices in 2011 with Sprint, including Motorola Photon 4G which launches this weekend. Other tidbits right below…

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Give it to Verizon’s new CEO, Lowell McAdam (right), who takes over from
Ivan Seidenberg (left) August 1

Verizon Wireless just announced their second-quarter earnings, reporting a 2.8 percent revenue growth on revenues of $27.5 billion and consolidated earnings of 57 cents in diluted earnings per share. The carrier also announced in a separate statement that its current CEO Ivan Seidenberg will step down to be replaced by 57-year-old president and COO Lowell McAdam, effective August 1. The change is part of Verizon’s CEO succession process under way since 2010. Seidenberg will retain his chairman of the board position. Lowell has been a member of Verizon’s executive team since 2000 and COO over the last ten months.

Prior to joining Verizon, McAdam served as president, COO and CEO of PrimeCo Personal Communications, a joint venture owned by Bell Atlantic and Vodafone AirTouch. He was also vice president of AirTouch Communications and lead technical partner for cellular ventures in Spain, Portugal, Sweden, Italy, Korea and Japan plus he held various executive positions with Pacific Bell. The executive earned his bachelor’s degree in engineering from Cornell University and a master’s degree in business administration from the University of San Diego. McAdam also spent six years in the US Navy’s Civil Engineer Corps and is a licensed professional engineer.

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Sony Ericsson revealed in its most recent filing it sold 16 million Xperia smartphones to date

Sony Ericsson today reported earnings for the quarter ended June 30. Revenues topped €1.19 billion, a 68 percent annual decline from €1.76 billion a year ago. Smartphone sales accounted for more than 70 percent of the company’s total sales during the quarter and they estimated their share of the Android market at eleven percent by both volume and value. The company shipped 7.6 million handsets during the June quarter, 31 percent less units on an annual basis and well below the low-end consensus of eight million units.

However, they reported a net loss of €50 million, which is especially troubling given a more modest loss of €11 million in the previous quarter and a net profit of €12 million in the year-ago quarter. Moreover, Sony Ericsson’s cash position has gone from around $2.2 billion prior to the iPhone launch to -250 million now. On a brighter note, Sony Ericsson said it shipped more than sixteen million Xperia smartphones to date, with eight new models rolled out in this year alone, including the Xperia Active pictured above. President and CEO Bert Nordberg attributed the declining business to the Japan earthquake in a statement accompanying the earnings report:

Sony Ericsson’s second quarter profitability was affected by the March 11 earthquake in Japan. We estimate that the impact of earthquake-related supply chain constraints on our portfolio was close to 1.5 million units, with most of the effect in the early part of the quarter.

The full press release is right after the break.

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CNN Money reports that Google and SolarCity, a rooftop solar power company, partnered on a new initiative aimed at making solar energy affordable to the masses. The deal worth $280 million was announced yesterday. It’s the nation’s largest residential solar project to date that will enable SolarCity to lease solar power systems to some nine thousand homeowners in the ten states where it operates and Google will recoup its investments through those leases. The deal comes on top of the 15,000 SolarCity’s solar projects that are either completed or under way.

Customers who wish to have the company’s solar system installed at their home can pay for it outright, but most choose instead to let SolarCity retain ownership of the equipment and rent back the use of it through monthly solar lease payments.

Google is all out on the green front, with investments ranging from wind farms to eco-friendly datacenters.