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.

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

Apple broke more records over the weekend, selling more than four million of its new iPhone 4S in its first three days on the market. The company also announced that more than 25 million customers are using iOS 5 five days after its release and more than 20 million customers have signed up for its iCloud service.

Apple served up more than 1 million pre-orders for the iPhone 4S in the first 24 hours and went on sell four times that amount over opening weekend.

Sales numbers did not disappoint, despite the issues Apple faced over the weekend as an untold number of users reported errors with the device’s new voice-activated service, Siri. Read more

Millions of BlackBerry users spanning at least four continents are without service for a third consecutive day. An untold number of customers, not all however, are unable to send messages, emails or browse the web in parts of North and South America, Africa, Middle East and Europe.

A little more than an hour ago, Research In Motion admitted that it’s still working to resolve the “service issue that many of our BlackBerry customers are experiencing.”

The early outages occurred Monday in Africa, Europe and the Middle East, but as of this morning they have reached the Americas — and they are ongoing. Read more

iPads generate more mobile traffic than all other iOS devices combined

Mobile devices comprised 6.8% of all online traffic in August 2011. Nearly two-thirds of that traffic came from mobile phones while tablets accounted for the remainder, according to a new report from comScore.

The number of U.S. subscribers consuming mobile media grew 19% in the past year to 116 million people. While the growth is noteworthy, it also highlights the large untapped market for mobile data that still exists. Read more