Sony Ericsson phones

Wall Street Journal is reporting that Sony is coming close to closing a deal with Telefon AB L.M. Ericsson to buy out their 50% stake of the Sony Ericsson brand. Sony Ericsson is currently the sixth largest mobile phone maker in the world, and Sony hopes to fully add them to their arsenal. As you can see in the graph after the break, Sony Ericsson’s market share has been declining rapidly in recent years.

While the talks could fall apart at any time, Sony Ericsson’s stake is estimated between $1.3 billion to $1.7 billion by analysts. Sony reportedly has high ambitions to regain the mobile phone market from primarily Apple and Google. For comparisons sake, Google acquired Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion, but of course the Sony situation is a little different.

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Motorola’s Xoom will get the promised 4G LTE modem upgrade in September, per corporate communication from Verizon Wireless sent to registered users, published by the Droid Life blog. The free of charge update promises a tenfold increase in network speeds, available to more than 110 million people in select markets where the carrier rolled out its 4G LTE network, with “coverage expanding every day”. The email notice reads:

Be on the lookout at the end of summer for an email with information about how to upgrade your Motorola XOOM to speeds up to 10X faster than 3G. In the meantime, learn more about what you can do to prepare for the 4G LTE upgrade to your Motorola XOOM by backing up data, encrypting, or resetting your Motorola Xoom tablet.

On a somewhat related note, T-Mobile and Sony Ericsson also began rolling out Gingerbread updates to the Xperia X10 and G2x

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