Sony Ericsson is retiring from selling CDMA mobile phones in North America. It says it remains committed to flogging CDMA phones in Japan, one of its heartlands, and it will continue to develop CDMA machine-to-machine modules. But it is otherwise retrenching around GSM, UMTS and EDGE mobile platforms.

In another cost-cutting move, the struggling mobile phone maker is shutting down its Munich R&D centre, and cutting back at its US CDMA research facility, leading to the loss of 500 jobs.

S-E has been losing market share ever since the two companies merged their handset units in 2001. Once upon a time, Ericsson was a strong no.3, behind Nokia and Motorola, on its own. Now, Samsung occupies this position and Siemens is in fourth place. But in a statement today, S-E claims it is starting to "drive market share growth in both the Japanese and GSM markets". ®