Gotta have shiny kicks to go with the tailored suit, and just the same, you gotta have new speakers to go with that fresh Walkman kit. To that end, Sony Ericsson has unleashed a big gift basket's worth of music accessories that pair nicely with its latest Walkman models, among many other phones from its present and past. Skipping right past a handful of new wired headphones, we get first to the MPS-100, a pair of mini-speakers that plug right into your mobile for a relatively low-tech solution. Next we have the HBH-IS800, a shockingly discrete pair of A2DP earbuds (think of the Etymotic ety8, then think of the opposite of that) connected by a cord. Finally we come to the MBS-200 -- a shiny sphere with a penchant for belting out tunes mono-style via Bluetooth -- and the MBS-400 (pictured), essentially an MBS-200 times two for true stereo action. Everything should be available in the fourth quarter, meaning your Festivus gift shopping chores have pretty much just solved themselves.

Happy 3rd birthday mister Walkman phone. To celebrate, Sony Ericsson is getting official with its W902 "Patti" (pictured), W595 slider, and W302 candybar Walkman handsets. We knew the celebration was coming with the exception of Patti making a last minute substitution for Alicia. SE's quad-band GSM/EDGE W902 is the all-singing, all-media workhorse with UMTS/HSDPA 2100 data, 5 megapixel camera, 8GB of M2 memory, and 2.2-inch, 240 x 320 pixel display. It comes bundled with a pair of premium HPM-77 headphones and the promise of a clear audio, bass-thumpin' experience similar to that offered by SE's W980. The W595 shares the same radios but packs in stereo speakers, 2GB of M2 memory, a 3.2 megapixel camera, motion sensing Shake control, and a stereo Share jack to split the music with a friend. The quad-band GSM/EDGE W302 neglects 3G entirely in favor of a low price tag and dreams of mass adoption. As such, it offers a number of middling specs like a 2 megapixel camera, 512MB of M2 memory, FM radio, and stereo Bluetooth. All three Walkmans will hit select markets in Q4.

At risk of getting delayed right into obscurity, Sony Ericsson looks like it's finally just about ready to release its long-announced PlayNow Arena mobile media store in a couple of European locales. SEMC Blog got the lowdown on screen shots of both the web-based and mobile versions of the Arena client, and we'll be honest, we're not really seeing what took so damn long. Okay, so we've got a unified portal for buying games, images, and music -- that's great and all, but not terribly unique, innovative, or interesting beyond the fact that many modern Sony Ericsson handsets should have tight integration with it out of the box. At least N-Gage can use the excuse that its fairly extensive community gaming aspect took some work to build out and get right; this, on the other hand, is little more than a glorified media store. Tell you what, though, guys: release a US-spec W980, and we'll cut you some slack the next time you delay a web portal by a few months. Honest.

Smell that? That, ladies and gentlemen, is the smell of anticipation -- Walkman anticipation, to be specific. The next chapter in Sony Ericsson's music-oriented range is about to get written today, with the W707 "Alicia," W595, and W302 all widely expected. Stay tuned; won't be long now.

Sony Ericsson warned the world just over a fortnight ago that things wouldn't be too rosy when it came time to announce Q2 results, and rosy things are not. Even though the handset maker was hoping and praying to break even at the end of the quarter, net profits ended up falling through the floor to the tune of 97%. As predicted, weak sales of mid-to-high-end mobiles were blamed for the bulk of the bad news, and it did affirm that conditions would remain rough for the rest of the year. Granted, the looming launch of the Xperia X1 should help matters a bit, but without a new stable of low-end cellies to send to emerging markets, it'll be a long road back to the top. Unfortunately, SE's sagging position in the market has left it slashing 2,000 jobs across the globe, though it didn't say exactly where the cuts would be made. It's okay SE, there's only one place to go when you're laying on the bottom... or something like that.

[Image courtesy of Flickr]

Read - Sony Ericsson's Q2 earnings
Read - Sony Ericsson plans job cuts

Like virtually all other Sony Ericsson hardware (sorry, Sony Ericsson, but it's true), the Remi is getting a full pictorial ahead of a presumed official announcement in the coming weeks or months. Pegged as a spiritual successor to the wildly popular T610 by fans, Remi (whose real model number hasn't been deduced yet) should end up essentially being a W890 in slightly tamer clothing. Thin, fast, and pretty -- sounds about right for a T610 descendent, assuming the boys and girls in London can deliver.

[Via Sony Ericsson Blog]

One of Sony Ericsson's more creative designs of recent memory, the W350 might be a whole lot closer to grubby American paws than many might have expected. Up for auction on eBay at the moment is a "lightly used" W350a variant in white featuring a silver highlight on the music controls; that in itself isn't particularly interesting, until you take a gander at the display and see a nice little AT&T logo silkscreened on the bezel. The listing's page doesn't give any clue as to when non-rich people might be able to get a subsidized W350 from the AT&T store in their neck of the woods, other than to state the obvious point that the "phone has not been released in the US yet, and you will not find this beautiful color anywhere else." So if you're really bent out of shape about taking delivery of this thing, you might want to dive in on the auction -- you never know if it's going to go the way of AT&T's ill-fated K850.

[Thanks, Bernard]

If you were thinking to yourself, "gee whiz, if only Sony Ericsson had made a Walkman version of the S302," well, your life is now complete. The sporty, hipper version of the S302 Snapshot is predictably hot-rodded up, though the changes seem to be strictly visual -- from a guts perspective, the W302 (codenamed "Feng," it seems) should be a dead ringer for its recently announced cousin. Sony Ericsson Blog claims we can expect to see it announced on July 22 alongside the W595 and W902, with a release in October.

Yes, it could be a knockoff or a rendering -- but given Sony Ericsson's storied history of being unable to keep unreleased phones on the down-low, we have every reason to believe we're looking at a real phone here. Besides some interesting texture on the case, we can see some Walkman branding on the bottom and the lower edge of the keypad, so it looks like we're dealing with a candybar; rumor has it there's a 2.4-inch screen up there somewhere, too. The rest, though, is pure guesswork at this point. Want more? Well, we're only half joking when we say we bet this'll be on eBay by next week, so line up that cash flow now just in case.

[Via SEfanatics]

The W580 is one of Sony Ericsson's more popular handsets for three very simple reasons: it's cheap, it's reasonably sharp-looking, and it knows its way around a playlist. Problem is, it's getting a little long in the tooth -- and that might just be where this rumored W595 (codenamed "Linda") comes into play. The spied slider claims a 3.2 megapixel camera, FM radio, stereo speakers, shake control (for controlling the media player with a few well-executed flicks of the wrist), and a svelte 14mm shell. Give us North American 3, Sony Ericsson, and we're sold.

[Via Sony Ericsson Blog]

It looks like Sony Ericsson's finally getting around to producing an ultra-thin candybar that isn't all dolled up in Walkman branding, which should be music to the ears of folks who hate music of all kinds (you know who you are). We jest -- obviously, the Walkman image isn't for everyone, and modern non-Walkman Sony Ericssons typically have plenty of prowess for busting out the tunes -- so we're actually seeing people from all walks of life being able to get into this so-called "Remi". The rumored handset looks plenty real in these shots posted over on se-nse, and the specs sound legit, too: HSDPA, a 3.2 megapixel cam, and a body measuring somewhere in the neighborhood of 10mm thick -- all attributes borrowed from its W890 cousin. Pictured next to the Remi on the right is the legendary T610, a phone that holds a very special place in the hearts of they Sony Ericsson faithful; with its aluminum shell and two-tone face, it's pretty obvious that the Remi is trying to tastefully evoke the T610's cues, so let's just hope there's some bite behind the bark when it launches.

Although Sony Ericsson just churned out a rather impressive array of new handsets this month, it seems the outfit is still having trouble securing record-setting profits. Truthfully, it's struggling to break even, as evidenced by the second profit warning of 2008 that was issued last week. SE is pinpointing "disappointing European sales of its mid- and high-end mobile phones" as the reason it will likely not see a profit in Q2, and some analysts are suggesting that shipment delays and a dearth of low-end handsets also carry a share of the blame. 'Course, the hotly-anticipated Xperia X1 could certainly make for a lovely Q3, but only time will tell if enough folks shell out for it to make a difference.

Like a dagger through Motorola's heart, we're sure, Sony Ericsson's collaboration with tennis superstar Maria Sharapova is starting to pay dividends with the Maria Sharapova Design Collection of custom phone accessories. Launching in the third quarter, wares include the "Courtside Case," Excercise Case, Travel Wallet, and "Party Bag" -- at least three of which we weren't aware we needed -- but the custom branding should push at least a few of these out the door. One word of caution, though: Miss Sharapova assures us in the press materials that "I am looking forward to using the collection with my Sony Ericsson T303," and if her phone of choice is seriously an EDGE-less slider with a 160 x 128 display, we're forced to cast her good taste into serious doubt.

[Via Engadget Spanish]

Look, we've heard our fair share of PSP phone rumors, and there's really no reason to trust this one any further than your average baseless musings, but if Marketing Week's "sources in Japan and Korea" can be trusted, Sony's PSP phone could be hitting shelves as soon as Christmas 2009. What does seem clear to these shady sources is that Sony won't be forking over the PlayStation branding to its Sony Ericsson partnership, and instead will build its PSP phone all by its lonesome. Other "details" from "analysts" are slightly less legit-sounding, with some stating it would be "relatively easy" to work phone features into the PSP since it already includes WiFi. Um, ok. Still, reasonable or not, this is clearly a rumor that will never die -- until Sony builds the dang thing, in which case we can start talking up a sequel.

[Thanks, Alex]