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Sony laptop battery Ericsson is finally stepping into the Android smartphone market.

The company announced Thursday that it will launch its first Android smartphone in April in Japan. Sold through the large Japanese carrier NTT DoCoMo, the Xperia X10–or SO-O1B as it will be known in Japan–will sport a 4-inch WVGA touchscreen and 8.1-megapixel camera. It will include both entertainment and social networking features.

The X10 is set for release in other regions, including the U.S., later this year.

Despite any hopes that the X10 might take advantage of the latest 2.0 version of Android, the phone Inspiron 2500 battery will run Android 1.6.

Powered by a 1GHz Snapdragon processor, the X10 throws in the usual goodies, including Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and GPS, but adds a stereo headset, 1GB of internal memory, and a 16GB MicroSD card for extra storage. Its camera offers a 16X digital zoom, auto focus, and image stabilization. Its face recognition can match the faces in a photo with contacts in your phonebook.

But it’s on the media and social networking front that Sony Ericsson hopes to make a splash. The phone will include Mediascape, an application designed to organize music, photos, and videos in one place. Mediascape also wirelessly plays media content from other sources, such as YouTube and PlayNow.

The X10’s Timescape app is designed to manage social contacts and conversations from one spot, letting you keep tabs on your e-mail, text messages, and your Facebook and Twitter accounts Inspiron 3700 battery.

Sony Ericsson could use a hot, new smartphone to light a fire under its performance. Hit by tough competition and weak consumer demand, the company has struggled the past couple of years and been forced to cut jobs and trim expenses.

Sales and earnings just announced for 2009 are evidence that Sony Ericsson went through a rough year, but some fourth-quarter results showed slight improvement, thanks to cost cuts and new products.

For 2009, sales plummeted to 6.8 billion euros ($9.5 billion) from 11.2 billion euros in 2008. The company’s net loss for the year reached 836 million euros from 73 million euros the previous year.

Sales for the fourth quarter also dropped, dipping to 1.7 billion euros from 2.9 billion euros in the prior-year quarter. But quarterly losses edged down slightly to 167 million euros from 187 million euros in 2008’s final quarter.

“The refreshed portfolio, coupled with the business transformation program has started to positively impact our financial results,” Sony Ericsson President Bert Nordberg said in a statement. “Continued cost saving activities and resource realignment are necessary in order to build a leaner, more efficient organization capable of meeting the demands of the changing competitive landscape.”

Looking ahead, Sony expects that its cost cuts won’t yield a sustained improvement until the second half of 2010. The company is also counting on a slew of new products  such as the Xperia X10 Inspiron 3800 battery, to help it return to profitability.

Advanced Micro Devices posted a fourth-quarter profit of $1.18 billion, its first profit in three years, largely due to a massive settlement with Intel laptop battery.

The $1.178 billion profit, or $1.52 per share, beat the analyst consensus estimate that had projected AMD to record a loss of 18 cents per share. In the same quarter last year, AMD lost $1.4 billion, or $2.36 per share.

The second largest global supplier of processors for PCs posted revenue of $1.646 billion, an increase of 42 percent compared with the same period a year ago. This beat analyst revenue estimates, which were pegged at $1.5 billion.

Fourth-quarter AMD gross margin, an important indicator of profit, was 45 percent, compared with 42 percent in the prior quarter and 23 percent in the year-earlier period.

AMD stated that the “favorable impacts” on its net income were primarily from a legal settlement with Intel. During the quarter, Intel and AMD announced a comprehensive agreement to end all outstanding legal disputes. As a result of this Latitude D830 batteryLatitude X300 battery agreement, Intel paid AMD $1.25 billion.

AMD said it expects revenue to be down seasonally for the first quarter of 2010.

Chief executive Dirk Meyer, who spoke during the company’s earnings conference call on Thursday, sees the PC market growing in “low double digits”–between 10 and 12 percent–in 2010.

And in 2010 the erstwhile chipmaker will put more distance between itself and its former manufacturing operation, which was spun off in 2008 and became Globalfoundries. “We have deconsolidated Globalfoundries starting in Q1. Moving forward, you will see us report AMD results only,” the company said in a statement. Globalfoundries will appear only as an equity investment in future AMD financial statements.

Notebooks a target as graphics chips surge
Laptops are a big target market for AMD in 2010, according to Meyer. “We’re under-penetrated in that category of product,” he said. “The broad (notebook) category represents an opportunity for us this year,” he said.

AMD laptop Latitude X300 battery processors are expected to become more competitive as the company moves most of its chips to a more advanced 45-nanometer manufacturing process. Intel, meanwhile, is in the process of transitioning to an industry-leading 32-nanometer manufacturing process.

The company shipped a record number of mobile “discrete” (standalone) graphics processing units (GPUs) in the quarter. And overall revenue in the graphics chip segment was $427 million, a 40 percent sequential increase and a 58 percent year-to-year jump.

AMD could have shipped more GPUs but supply from its manufacturing partner Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company was “heavily constrained,” Meyer said. In particular, AMD’s new Radeon 5000 series of graphics processors have been well-received in the market.

As the date of the Apple laptop battery event next week approaches, more details about the device are leaking out.

On Wednesday night, the Wall Street Journal reported that Apple’s newest gadget could be a hub for all kinds of media: magazines, newspapers, books, text books, music, games, and video. All of that has been speculated about before, but the target demographic and the primary use for the device–which falls somewhere between a smartphone and a laptop–has been more of a mystery. Now it seems we’re starting to have a clearer picture: the device has been purposely designed to be shared between members of a household as easily as possible, according to one of the Journal’s unnamed sources PA3176U-1BRS,PA3178U-1BRS.

Apple has “put significant resources into designing and programming the device so that it is intuitive to share,” including the idea of “virtual sticky notes” that can be left for others, and a built-in camera that can tell who is using it, says the Journal’s source.

The content, however, seems like it will be the key to the tablet. It was reported earlier that Apple has been talking with book and magazine publishers about porting their content to the device, but it wasn’t clear who exactly was involved. Apple has been in discussion with The New York Times Co., Conde Nast Publications, and HarperCollins Publishers over content deals, and is apparently also negotiating with TV networks such as CBS and Walt Disney for monthly subscription deals, according to the report. (CBS is the parent company of CNET.)

The Journal’s report also mentions the idea of an iTunes.com streaming music service that would allow purchase of iTunes content from places other than directly through iTunes, launching sometime in June. CNET’s Greg Sandoval reported earlier Wednesday that Apple is talking to all four major music labels about a free streaming service that would be designed to boost download sales.

If this is the strategy Apple is pursuing, it’s setting itself up to be the gatekeeper of all kinds of “old” media through its iTunes Store and connected devices by finding ways to continue to grow its share of music and video sales in addition to worming its way into electronic books, textbooks, and video games. It will be interesting to see who gets on board since both the music industry and film and TV studios have chafed at Apple’s gatekeeping practices in the past. One of the Journal’s sources–someone who worked with him previously–does say that Steve Jobs is “supportive of the old guard and (he) looks to help them by giving them new forms of distribution.”

The Journal’s report also included other details, some of which have already been reported elsewhere:

• It will have a virtual keyboard.
• Apple is talking to Microsoft not only about using Bing as the default search engine in the iPhone, but also as the default mapping service.
• Electronic Arts is in discussions with Apple about showing off the gaming abilities of the tablet–which explains why the gaming press was invited to the event next week.
• Apple is toying with changing “conventional payment structures,” for content on the device.