T-Mobile is also looking to free up space in another part of its spectrum that should finally allow iPhone users to run on its network at full speed. The company has about a million iPhone subscribers, even though those devices can only run at slow 2G speeds. T-Mobile USA does not sell the iPhone itself.

At a dinner event in New Orleans on Monday, CTO Neville Ray said that the effort to reclaim some of its 1900 MHz spectrum should reach a critical mass in the fourth quarter of this year, allowing the company to more aggressively court AT&T subscribers that are no longer under contract.

Ray declined to comment on whether the company would directly target iPhone users in a big marketing push planned for later this year.

“It would make sense,” Ray agreed, but added, “We’re not there yet.”

The company announced on Monday night two of the companies that will help it build out its next-generation network: Ericsson and Nokia Siemens Networks.

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That’s also what the folks at Article One Partners thought, so they conducted a study, along with Thomson Reuters, to see who holds what with regard to patents on 4G LTE technology.

When it comes to the patents rated “highly essential,” the study found that Nokia, Qualcomm, Samsung and LG held nearly half of the patents. When adding in the proviso of the patents also being highly novel, the study found that Nokia, Qualcomm, Samsung and Ericsson collectively own 55 percent of the highly essential and most novel patents.

While things are still shifting, the results should help companies better understand where they fit when it comes to the next generation of wireless technology.

“One of the things companies can use this kind of work is for landscaping,” Article One investor and director Marshall Phelps said in an interview. If a company notices it doesn’t have much intellectual property in an area that most people see as essential, Phelps said, “that might tell you where you have holes in your portfolio.”

Of course, the real problem remains — namely that most of the major wireless companies are suing one another rather than licensing each other’s technology.

“It’s a circular firing squad,” Phelps said. “The industry is not mature enough yet to figure out how to deal with each other.”

Right now, for example, Apple is suing Samsung and HTC, Microsoft is suing Barnes & Noble and Motorola, and Oracle is suing Google, to name just a few of the major legal actions gripping the industry.

Over time, though, Phelps expects that the wireless companies will figure out a way to license technology in such a way that companies can both partner and compete.

“In the high-tech world, litigation has rarely stopped anyone from competing,” said Phelps, who led intellectual property licensing at Microsoft, and at IBM before that. Phelps said that is especially true in smartphones, which necessarily must use thousands of patents worth of technology.

Phelps said he doesn’t blame companies that are struggling in the marketplace but asserting their patents.

“It’s an asset, like your building is,” he said. “If you are not using it, you should be.”

And the values of those IP buildings are skyrocketing, as evidenced by Google’s pending $12.5 billion purchase of Motorola Mobility, among other deals.

“What you see with these giant purchases are companies that don’t feel they are in a good position trying to buttress their position,” Phelps said. “Everybody knows right now IP is really critical, and if you don’t got it, you better get it.”

I’m told Nicira has just made another key hire, again from Cisco Systems. Bruce Davie, a longtime Cisco employee and a Cisco Fellow, has joined Nicira as its Chief Service Provider Architect.

Davie is pretty well known in networking circles, and is one of the co-inventors of MPLS, or multiprotocol label switching, which is a fundamental basis for the high-end business class Internet service that many carriers deliver.

Davie joined Cisco in 1995, and has been a Cisco Fellow since 1998. Since 1997, he has worked in the Internet Technologies Division at Cisco, and leads a group that represents the company before the Internet Engineering Task Force. If there’s anyone who truly understands how the Internet’s pipes really work, he’s probably among them.

Before Cisco, Davie worked at Bellcore, a.k.a. Bell Communications Research, the old research and development arm of the regional phone companies, or “Baby Bells,” that resulted from the 1982 court-ordered breakup of the old AT&T. Bellcore is still around; it eventually became Telcordia and ended up in the hands of Swedish telecom concern Ericsson, in a deal that closed earlier this month.

Davie has a B.E. from Melbourne University, and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Edinburgh University. He is the author of three books on networking, and lots of technical papers. He is also an active participant on both the Internet Engineering Task Force and the Internet Research Task Force; a senior member of the IEEE; and has, in recent years, been a visiting lecturer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Davie would appear to be the eighth person at Nicira (by my likely incomplete count) with a Cisco connection. Its CEO is Steve Mullaney, a veteran networking executive who has worked at Palo Alto Networks, ShoreTel and Cisco. Its CTO and co-founder, Martin Casado, did his Ph.D. on the technology the company plans to bring to market. Its other founders, Nick McKeown and Scott Shenker, are electrical engineering profs at Stanford and Berkeley, respectively. Last January, the outfit also hired Rob Enns, a veteran of Juniper Networks, as its VP of engineering.

There’s still no official word about what Nicira is doing, but all these hires are making it look ever more interesting by the day. Nicira is working on technology aimed at “virtualizing the network.” Data center networks today are too inflexible, complex and costly, especially in the age of the cloud, when everything is on-demand, flexible and cheap. Nicira’s Web site says the product is a software solution that runs on existing networks, requires no new hardware and is aimed directly at large-scale cloud data centers. Interesting, indeed.

Rather than use one phone to capture video or an immersive still picture, Joergen Geerds, Dan Finkler and Mark Sevenoff used six Sony Ericsson Xperia neo phones in a custom mount to record a ride down Slickrock Trail in Utah’s Moab Desert.

The group used a 3D printer to create the mount that held the six phones and recorded video on each phone, then stitched it all together. The result is an interactive video, playable on the Web, that allows viewers to replay the ride from all different angles, shifting smoothly from one position to another as the video plays.

The Moab outing is the centerpiece of an Xperia Studio project sponsored by Sony Ericsson that aims to show the creative possibilities of its products.

For Geerds, the panorama format was familiar as his main business is shooting large nighttime cityscapes. But, video was news.

“With the video I figured I wanted to go in a different direction, and bring more humanity in it,” Geerds said in an interview. That’s when Geerds got connected with Finkler, a New York-based developer, who created the bluetooth remote control software and Sevenoff, who did the actual bike riding.

One of the challenges with shooting video was that Geerds couldn’t find any commercial software for stitching together the panoramic videos. Instead, Geerds relied on the software he uses for processing stills. That meant breaking each video into a collection of hundreds of thousands of jpeg images.

“It certainly was the most complex project I’ve ever worked on,” Geerds said.

The hardest part, Geerds said, was learning to use the software to do the 3D printing that allowed the fabrication of the custom rigging used to mount the cameras on the bike.

The shoot itself was done the week of Sept. 19. Geerds said most things went relatively smoothly, although he found out later that one of the six cameras did get a bit wobbly on the ride down.

One surprise was that the phones’ battery life held up pretty well.

“We had tons of replacement batteries with us,” Geerds said, but they ended up not needing most of them, getting two to three hours of battery life from each camera phone. A bigger issue, he said, was running out of space on SD cards.

Another key was Finkler’s remote control software, which allowed the video recording to be stopped and re-started remotely using a seventh smartphone.

“We are trying to put more features into the software, and will probably release it on github once it’s more polished,” Geerds said.

He flatly refused to tip his hand at last week’s AsiaD conference. But on Thursday, Sony announced that it is indeed buying out Ericsson in the two companies’ Sony Ericsson joint venture.

Under the terms of the deal, Sony will pay Ericsson 1.05 billion euros; will enter a broad patent cross-licensing deal, giving all of Sony’s products license to Ericsson’s patents; and will take ownership of five patent families directly related to wireless handsets.

Although Hirai refused last week to say whether Sony would buy out the joint venture, he did say it was essential for the company to have control and influence over the unit’s products. And what better way to get control and influence than by taking full ownership?

In their statement announcing the deal, the two companies noted that a lot has changed since the venture was set up 10 years ago, and that, given the shift to smartphones, there is less overlap than there once was with the rest of Ericsson’s business.

Sony also said the move will help it offer more integrated products.

“We can more rapidly and more widely offer consumers smartphones, laptops, tablets and televisions that seamlessly connect with one another and open up new worlds of online entertainment,” Sony CEO Howard Stringer said in a statement.

Regardless of who owns it, the handset business has its work cut out for it, having dropped in status to a relatively minor player in the global smartphone business, despite having some nice Android-based hardware.

By wresting full control of Sony Ericsson, a 50-50 joint venture created in 2001 that is the world’s sixth-largest cellphone manufacturer, Sony aims to integrate the smartphone business with that of its tablets, hand-held game machines, and personal computers to save on costs and better synchronize development of mobile devices, the people said.

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A consortium of six companies last month paid $4.5 billion to acquire a portfolio of 6,000 patents auctioned by the bankrupt Canadian telecom equipment maker Nortel Networks, thwarting Google’s interest. The final amount, five times Google’s original $900 million “stalking horse” bid, stunned observers and raised concerns about how the consortium intended to use them.

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So how is the company feeling after losing the auction to a consortium including several rivals that have Android in their legal crosshairs?

Well, not too good, thanks for asking.

“This outcome is disappointing for anyone who believes that open innovation benefits users and promotes creativity and competition,” Google Senior VP and General Counsel Kent Walker said in a statement provided to AllThingsD. “We will keep working to reduce the current flood of patent litigation that hurts both innovators and consumers.”

The patents sold for $4.5 billion to a group made up of Apple, EMC, Ericsson, Microsoft, Research In Motion and Sony. The collection of more than 6,000 patents covers a range of technologies, including lots in wireless and networking and some related to 4G wireless technology.

Google and its Android partners are, of course, finding themselves entwined in a host of legal battles. Apple is suing Taiwanese phone maker HTC, while Oracle is suing Google directly.

Microsoft has sued Motorola and Barnes & Noble over their use of the open source operating system, while seeking Android royalties from any company that will pay. HTC has already agreed to a deal with Microsoft, as have three smaller players, in moves announced this week.

Given all that, open source patent watcher Florian Mueller said he was surprised Google didn’t cough up whatever was necessary to get its hands on Nortel’s patents.

“No major industry player is as needy in terms of patents as Google,” Mueller said, noting that there are some 45 patent infringement lawsuits already surrounding Android. Still, he noted, “By purchasing Nortel’s portfolio, Google couldn’t have solved all of Android’s patent issues in one fell swoop.”

Mueller said the patents wouldn’t have helped much against Oracle, for example. “But Google lost an unprecedented opportunity to acquire a major bargaining chip that would strengthen it at the mobile industry’s intellectual property negotiating table.”

“Following a very robust auction, we are pleased at the outcome of the auction of this extensive patent portfolio,” Nortel Chief Strategy Officer George Riedel said in a statement. “The size and dollar value for this transaction is unprecedented, as was the significant interest in the portfolio among major companies around the world.”

The winning bid requires approval of both U.S. and Canadian courts, which the company will seek at a joint hearing expected to take place on July 11. Nortel said it will work with the winning bidders in an effort to close the sale in the third quarter.

The consortium won the bidding, but a number of other players had publicly expressed interest or were believed to be interested in the patents, including one of the eventual winners — Ericsson — and Google, which had placed the initial $900 million bid to begin the auction process. Google had justified its initial bid by saying that patents are necessary given the increasingly litigious environment these days.

Google, as well as its hardware partners, face a number of lawsuits related to Android. Apple, for example, has sued HTC, while Oracle has sued Google directly and Microsoft also has claimed Android hardware infringes on its patents, suing both Motorola and Barnes and Noble.

The patents covered a broad range of areas, Nortel said, including all manner of telecommunications and networking technologies — wireless and 4G wireless, among others — as well as additional areas such as Internet search and social networking.

Even with the cash haul, Nortel said it still doesn’t expect to have any remaining value for common shareholders once it completes its bankruptcy protection hearings.

Because it came late in the last quarter, the company said, the business impact on that period’s financial results was minimal.

“The impact on Q2 and beyond remains uncertain,” Bill Glasier, the company’s chief financial officer, said on a conference call following the company’s earnings report.

Among the components most affected by the quake were camera modules, batteries and displays, Sony Ericsson said. The company said it is working with suppliers to move to areas not impacted by the quake and, where necessary, to add secondary component suppliers.

Sony Ericsson has been working to boost its share of the global phone market by focusing on Android-based smartphones, but said that sales growth could be hampered by the quake.

The company has about 11 percent of the total Android market globally, but has a very small share in North America–a key smartphone market. Further growth depends on improving its fortunes here, CEO Bert Nordberg reiterated on the conference call. At the same time, Nordberg said that rebuilding the U.S. position must be done step by step with committed carriers as opposed to building a bunch of devices and hoping they will sell.

Verizon is due to launch the company’s Xperia Play–the so-called PlayStation Phone–sometime this spring. Sony Ericsson didn’t give any further details on the timing.

The Franco-American company has hired advisers and in recent days began to examine options for the business, which has about $1.5 billion in annual sales. Besides a sale to a single buyer, other options include an initial public offering. The range of possible buyers for the business could include tech companies like Microsoft Corp. or Hewlett-Packard Co., or other telecom-gear makers like Ericsson and private-equity firms. Valuations of the business vary, but one person said it’s worth well over $1 billion and possibly more than $2 billion.

Besides office telephones, Alcatel-Lucent’s enterprise business sells switches and other networking gear, plus hardware and software used in the call centers. The business is growing and profitable, one person said, but it accounts for less than 10% of the company’s annual revenue, which last year was $21.5 billion.

While the Consumer Electronics Show and other big events feature acres of tiny booths crammed one against another, Mobile World Congress features a different kind of bigness. The show is spread out over eight big buildings in a historic area of town. Every couple of buildings are set several flights of stairs up from the last one, with the final two buildings just a stone’s throw from the grand National Palace.

Connecting the buildings and lining the promenade between them are various smaller trailers and bungalows.

Unlike the cramped booths at CES, the spread-out nature of Mobile World Congress allows even moderate-size companies a good amount of space to show their wares. Even those with bungalows outside a main hall stand a good chance of attracting visitors. Companies that went with that approach included Acer and INQ Mobile, which was touting its new Android phone with quick access to Facebook and Spotify.

That said, some folks’ presence at Mobile World Congress is clearly bigger than others.

One booth that stands out is Google’s first-ever Android booth, tucked in the corner of Hall 8, just inside the entrance.

The two-story pavilion features many of Google’s partners showing Android applications, as well as a place to create one’s own Android mini-me, plus a sushi-bar-style conveyor belt featuring the many phone and tablet designs based on the Google operating system. Among the designs that scrolled by while I was standing there were well-known names such as Samsung and HTC, as well as less-familiar brands such as China’s ZTE and Alcatel, which is new to Android.

Perhaps the pièce de résistance of the booth is a slide that allows children of all chronological ages to relive their youth and glide down from the top floor back to the bottom. The most popular thing, though, was a series of collectible pins being passed out throughout Mobile World Congress by various Android partners. They were a hot commodity, and by Tuesday afternoon most booths were completely out of their supply of pins, placing green candy inside the dishes instead.

While impressive, the Android booth was not the largest by any stretch. One of the more massive setups I saw was the Ericsson booth, which occupied nearly all of Hall 6. A small Sony Ericsson booth was open to the public. Behind a security gate, though, was a massive spread for the many partners of both Ericsson and Sony Ericsson. It featured two bars and two kiosks serving various tapas.

There were meeting rooms and patio tables for more-casual interactions. On display were all kinds of Ericsson technologies ranging from its core infrastructure gear to all kinds of other products and research projects.

A few caught my eye, including a mobile payment section that featured a “Museum of Money” talking about days gone by when people used paper currency with all its flaws. Under glass were such relics as money, piggy banks and counterfeit-detection pens, while Ericsson showed off its many payment technologies.

In another corner, Ericsson was showing off a vending machine that is paid, not with cash or credit card, but via SMS message. Ericsson has a unit that serves as an intermediary between the vendor and the carrier to manage the transaction.

The cellphone maker is hoping that its PlayStation phone, combined with several other new smartphones, will help lift the company to the top of the Android race as opposed to being just one of the pack.

In an interview at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Sony Ericsson CTO Jan Uddenfeldt told Mobilized that the company intends to capitalize on Sony technologies beyond gaming, particularly in the areas of screens and cameras.

“We think we have a really competitive edge,” said Uddenfeldt. The Xperia Arc, for example, uses the Bravia Engine that comes from Sony’s television heritage. “We will introduce 3-D technology and that will come from Sony, of course.

Uddenfeldt said that the company is now leading on Android as well, being the first company outside of Google itself to release a Gingerbread-based phone, with its Arc that was announced at CES. At Mobile World Congress, it announced the Xperia Play and two other phones.

“From being a little bit of a laggard when it comes to Android releases, we are now the leader,” he said. “We intend to really stay that way. Our intention is to be the number one player in this Android world.”

First and foremost, Uddenfeldt said the company has to be a leader when it comes to using both the latest version of Android and the newest chips and other hardware. “It is a technology race, so it is very important to be on the latest technology,” he said.

With Xperia Play, Uddenfeldt said, the company has something that takes advantage of the latest and greatest version of Android but also does something unique.

“We don’t see anyone else doing this in the near future,” he said. In addition to being PlayStation certified, it will also work with a lot of Android games, including many customized just for the Play.

“Most of the games that we will launch are actually non-Sony-based games, Android games,” he said, referring to deals with Gameloft and EA Sports to create Xperia Play-optimized titles. “There’s going to be like 50 games when we launch the product in March or April.”

Though most Americans wouldn’t know it, Sony Ericsson is a top-three global player in Android phones, with about 20 percent market share, he said. Until recently, Uddenfeldt said, the company would tend to introduce phones first in Europe and Asia, bringing them to the U.S. several months later–and that, he said, “was absolutely not the right strategy.”

“The U.S. is now the leading market,” he said. “The U.S. is the country where the most advanced products are being launched first. That was not the case two or three years ago.”

Sony Ericsson is realizing this and is changing, he said, noting that Verizon will be among the first carriers to offer the Play. “We will work very closely with AT&T in launching different products as well,” he added.

The company is also shifting more of its design and engineering to the U.S., Uddenfeldt said, noting that the Redwood Shores, Calif., office where he works, established just two years ago, now has about 300 workers doing everything from product design and engineering to business development.

“It’s the right place to be,” he said. “We have Android there. We have Facebook.”

Uddenfeldt has a unique perspective, having been with Sony Ericsson for only six months but at the same time being a 30-year Ericsson veteran and being based in Silicon Valley for the past several years. He’s also not afraid to admit that the company has made mistakes, including in the past year as it tried to move from proprietary Walkman and Cybershot phones to a fully Android-based lineup.

“I don’t think Sony Ericsson fully understood the importance of being on the latest Android release,” he said. “That kind of hindered a little bit the growth of the company during last year.”

However, he said, with the move to Android, the company has stemmed its losses and has now had four profitable quarters. This year, he said, it is time for growth.

The event is set to kick off shortly and Mobilized will have live coverage here.

1:05 pm: Well, despite timely warnings to get in our seats beginning at 12:45, it’s now five minutes after and the techno is still pumping.

1:11 pm: Okay. Getting started. Loud music gets louder. Cue video.

Tony Melone and Marni Walden take the stage and CEO Daniel Mead (at least I think it is Mead) is doing an intro.

1:15 pm: Another video now playing with partners. Since HTC CEO Peter Chou is in there, I think it is probably safe to say their oft-rumored LTE smartphone will make an appearance.

1:16 pm: Samsung and Ericsson execs also in the video.

1:17 pm: Verizon exec now touting the advantages of its 4G network including its spectrum, which it says will give it the best in-building coverage.

Also talking about how it is sharing its spectrum with rural service providers.

1:18 pm: Mead: “We’re very pleased to be part of bringing broadband to rural America.”

1:21 pm: Mead hands off to CTO Tony Melone to talk 4G and LTE.

Melone says that the company knows there is a lot of skepticism of the company’s move to go straight to LTE but that the bet is paying off with more networks and running faster than planned.

“The customer feedback we are getting is everything we had hoped for and then some,” Melone says.

Melone talks about 4G LTE plans.

Thirty-six months from now we will have the nation covered with LTE, Melone says. Two-thirds of the population will be covered in 2012. This year alone, he says, Verizon will add 140 new markets, including places like Little Rock, Detroit and Sioux Falls.

1:26 pm: On to devices.

Ten devices coming by mid-year being shown on stage: Four smartphones, two tablets, two notebooks and two mobile hotspots.

1:33 pm: LG CEO shows off the LG Revolution, what appears to be a slimmish smartphone.

Next up, Skype’s CEO talks about a new partnership that will allow for Skype to be always on and integrated into the address book of all of Verizon’s LTE smartphones,

1:34 pm: He’s followed by HTC CEO Peter Chou, who introduces the HTC Thunderbolt.

Chou says he’s been personally testing and using the Thunderbolt, which features the new Skype video chatting along with HTC’s Sense user interface.

“Let me tell you, it’s blazing fast,” Chou says.

Other features include a built-in 4G hotspot and a 4.3-inch Super LCD screen.

1:37 pm: He thanks Qualcomm and Google engineers that worked together to create the device, so guessing this one isn’t using Nvidia’s Tegra chip.

Next up is Electronic Arts VP Travis Boatman. EA’s mobile games lineup ranges from Monopoly and Tetris to Need for Speed and the FIFA 11 soccer game.

The new mobile version of Rock Band for Verizon’s LTE network lets people form a band and remotely jam over the network.

Samsung executive goes onstage to show off three devices for the LTE network, One is a mobile hotspot, one is a smartphone and the other is a 4G version of the Galaxy Tab.

Phone packs 4.3-inch Super Amoled Plus display, which is said to boost colors and offer improved display. It’s got an 8-megapixel rear-facing camera with HD video and a 1.3-megapixel front-facing camera for video chat.

The tablet has a 1.2GHz processor developed by Samsung, while the hotspots provide connections to up to five users at a time.

Most impressive is the fact that the Samsung executive pulled all three devices out of various pockets.

Marni Walden shows off the remaining devices–a Novatel MiFi hotpot that works with both 3G and 4G networks.

There is also a Compaq Netbook, an HP notebook, as well as the previously announced Motorola Xoom and Motorola Droid Bionic.

1:47 pm: On to Q&A (hoping laptop No. 2 holds out through the end of question time.)

First question has to do with LTE speeds, which often exceed the 5- to 12-megabit speeds promised. Mead says that the company’s goal is to meet the promised speed range once the network is fully loaded, something that is not the case today.

Next question is on battery life. Melone says the company believes it will be able to meet customer expectations in that regard.

The company says it won’t announce pricing or rate plans for the 4G products, beyond noting its current prices for 4G laptop cards and service.

As for simultaneous voice and data, Walden says the company intends that at least some of its 4G launch devices will support talking and accessing data at the same time.

“It could be on some devices and not all,” Walden says.

Walden also confirms all the phones it showed Thursday are running Android.

1:55 pm: Asked about net neutrality, Mead says that what the industry needs is “unfettered development.”

“We think the free market system works very well, and we don’t need a lot of heavy intervention.”

Last year, Nortel sold its optical networking and carrier ethernet business to Ciena for $769 million and its wireless business to Ericsson for $1.3 billion. Soon it will sell off its patents as well, among them some thought to be essential 4G wireless technologies like Long Term Evolution (LTE) and Service Architecture Evolution (SAE).

And that IP is drawing a lot of interest from the likes of Research in Motion, Nokia, Google and Apple, none of which want to see it in the hands of a rival, particularly as 4G’s commercial availability broadens. Sources tell me all four companies are participating in the auction, and Reuters reports that final bids are due in a matter of weeks. Said one source, “Whoever buys these patents is buying a hell of an advantage.”

Reached for comment, Apple and RIM declined. Google and Nokia did not respond.

Under the terms of the deal, Motorola (MOT) will retain its wireless patent portfolio and iDEN assets, while Nokia Siemens acquires all that remains: the company’s GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications), CDMA (Code-Division Multiple Access), WCDMA (Wideband Code-Division Multiple Access), WiMax and LTE (Long-Term Evolution) operations, along with contracts to supply some 50 wireless carriers and cable companies, among them top wireless carriers like Verizon (VZ), Sprint Nextel (S) and KDDI in Japan.

Not a bad deal for Nokia Siemens, which had been struggling to bolster its presence in North America. The company last year bid in two auctions for Nortel Networks’ assets and lost both times, first to Ericsson and then to Ciena.

For Motorola, which has been looking to unload its network infrastructure business for quite some time now, the deal is an important step in its plan to spin off its mobile and cable set-top box divisions into a separate company early next year.

Last year, Huawei posted net profit of $2.7 billion on sales of $21.8 billion. Dow Jones spoke with Kevin Zhang, vice president of global marketing, about the company’s strategy in the handset space and the telecom-equipment market outlook. The following is an edited version of the interview.

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That’s because Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone is selling surprisingly well in South Korea since its debut in the market last year. And there are plenty of cheaper smart phones from local vendors such as Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics. Sony Ericsson is working with SK Telecom, South Korea’s biggest telecom operator by subscribers, to offer the handset for about $729.

Sony Ericsson, a joint venture between Japan’s Sony (SNE) and Sweden’s Ericsson (ERIC), has been struggling over the past few years to stay competitive in the global handset market. While it is the world’s fourth largest global handset maker by shipments behind Nokia (NOK), Samsung and LG Electronics, just until recently, it was mired in losses while others continued to make a profit.

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The cuts, which are not part of a previously announced cost-cutting scheme, come after Ericsson posted an appalling 92 percent drop in fourth-quarter profit. The company reported net profit of $43.4 million in the quarter, down from $539.4 million in the year-ago quarter. Sales slid 13 percent to $8.08 billion, down from $9.29 billion in the fourth quarter last year.

Needless to say, Ericsson’s performance fell well short of analysts’ expectations.