BARCELONA — Just 11 days after gaining complete control of its smartphone unit through a $1.49 billion deal with Ericsson, the new Sony Mobile Communications rounded out its NXT series portfolio of devices with mid- and lower-tier units, the Xperia P and Xperia U.

“Tonight we are kicking off an inspiring new chapter for our company,” Bert Nordberg, CEO and president of Sony Mobile Communications said here tonight at the onset of a press event.

Extending the design aesthetic of the Xperia S, which was introduced earlier this year and goes on sale this week in Barcelona, the Android-based Xperia P and Xperia U will both launch in the middle of the second quarter, targeting more budget-conscious shoppers. The dual-core 1 GHz processor phones can capture photos in 2D and 3D and both come equipped with Near Field Communications technology. Read more

webOS has effectively been dead since mid August, but reports of its impending death continue to swirl. Hewlett-Packard Co. made a colossal error this past summer when it abandoned its webOS device business and shunned any ongoing commitment to the webOS platform. Such a move would instantly slash the value of any business and indeed it has. The HP-Palm deal is one of most botched marriages and subsequent business decisions to hit the wireless industry in years.

HP threw in the towel on its mobile plans way too early, and just as it was getting off the ground with new webOS devices and a tablet built primarily by the Palm team it acquired 18 months ago for $1.2 billion. Leo Apotheker was forced out of the top job at the company over that decision and newly installed CEO Meg Whitman has shifted gears on the mobile front, but only slightly. Read more

After a decade together, one of the mobile industry’s largest remaining joint ventures has come undone. Sony agreed to pay Ericsson $1.49 billion to acquire its 50% share of Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications.

With the long-expected deal finally behind it, Ericsson exits the mobile handset business and can focus on its core infrastructure business. And now as a wholly-owned subsidiary of Sony, the mobile division can make better use of the Sony brand, which has always been stronger in consumer circles.

Sony has some semblance of a renewed opportunity to better integrate its mobile offering with its wide range of consumer electronics. It also gains an IP-cross licensing agreement and ownership of five patent families related to wireless device technology. Read more

Verizon Wireless turned in another strong quarter with total revenues up 9.1% to $17.7 billion. The carrier ended the quarter with 107.7 million total connections, marking a 6.5% year-over-year increase. It also banked $7.2 billion in net income, increasing 7.5% from the year-ago period.

Verizon Wireless added 1.3 million total connections in the third quarter, including 882,000 retail postpaid customers, and 367,000 wholesale and other connections. By contrast, AT&T added 2.1 million wireless subscribers during the same period, lead heavily by M2M and other connected devices. Read more

AT&T’s iPhone sales declined in the third quarter, but that should come as no surprise following Apple’s earnings earlier this week.

AT&T benefited greatly, and exclusively, from the new iPhones previously released by Apple in the third quarters of 2009 and 2010. That didn’t happen this year, and AT&T’s year-over-year wireless revenue growth slowed as a result. The company reported $3.6 billion in profit, declining more than 70% from the year-ago period. Revenues were down 0.3% to $31.5 billion. Read more

Nokia held on through another quarter with no major new devices, but it didn’t come cheap. The Finnish handset maker lost $98.7 million on a 25% year-over-year decline in handset sales and continued losses at NAVTEQ and Nokia Siemens Networks.

Revenues were down 13%, smartphone sales dropped 39% and feature phone sales slid 13%. Nokia sold 106.6 million mobile devices during the quarter, nearly 90 million of which were basic candy bar phones and the like. Indeed, the one bright spot in Nokia’s earnings came from its Symbian-based mobile phones. The company sold 89.9 million mobile devices during the quarter, an 8% jump from the year prior and a 25% increase from the previous quarter.

While losses continue at NAVTEQ and Nokia Siemens Networks, they did move in the right direction. Nokia is widely expected to unveil its first Windows Phone-based smartphones next week at Nokia World in London.

BlackBerry-maker Research In Motion biffed its response to last week’s massive outage and worse yet, is coming up short at this week’s BlackBerry DevCon Americas conference. With every month that passes, the smartphone pioneer loses more runway, and with it the ability to carry the BlackBerry brand forward.

Last week’s major outage did no favors for BlackBerry’s already tarnished image. The company needed a strong response to the snafu and should feel tremendous pressure to deliver something meaningful in a few key areas.

Calling its half-hearted apology for last week’s outage a “Thank You Gift from BlackBerry” was poor form. First and foremost, BlackBerry users want their devices to work. A dozen free apps worth $100 will do nothing to keep customers happy. Rather than rewarding its dwindling base of loyal users with something meaningful, RIM is offering its customers apps like SIMS 3, Texas Hold’em Poker 2, Shazam Encore and iSpeech Translator Pro. Read more

Google Nexus, the next flagship smartphone for Android drops next month. The Samsung device will also serve as the debut for Ice Cream Sandwich, or Android 4.0.

The updated operating system from Google features a refined user experience that mirrors many of the enhancements Google brought to its Honeycomb build for tablets. Ice Cream Sandwich also delivers improved multi-tasking, notifications, NFC support and a new People app that organizes your contacts and the photos and other content you share with them. Read more

Apple fired a rare miss last quarter with slowed growth, declining iPhone sales and a drop in profit. iPhone sales were pointedly down in the second half of the quarter after iOS 5 was announced and speculation of a new iPhone intensified.

As always, Apple is playing the slip off in a typically calm, cool and collected manner. The drop in iPhone sales was less than expected, according to executives, and CEO Tim Cook said he is “confident that (Apple) will set an all-time record for iPhone this quarter.”

iPhone sales were up 21% year-over-year to 17.07 million units, but down from the previous two quarters. Year-over-year iPad sales shot up 166% to a new high of 11.12 million, Mac sales jumped 26% to 4.89 million and iPod sales declined 27% to 6.62 million. Read more

Android is now powering more than 190 million devices. Google CEO and co-founder Larry Page calls the platform’s growth “mind boggling.”

Mobile is playing an increasingly important role in the company’s future, but until last week’s earnings call there was little sense of just how much it contributes to the company’s bottom line.

Mobile is now operating at an annual run rate above $2.5 billion, Page said, adding that revenue tied to the company’s mobile operations has grown two-and-a-half times in the last 12 months. Read more