

Times have not been good for Japanese-Swedish cell phone maker Sony Ericsson. The company has been stuck with disappointing figures and mediocre products. Now it is focusing on Android smartphones and that’s paying off, says Jan Uddenfeldt, chief technology officer and head of Sony Ericsson Silicon Valley.

Uddenfeldt made the comments in a speech at Sony Ericsson’s annual Business Innovations Forum at Stanford yesterday. He believes the company can triple its market share in the U.S. in the near future. Right now the company is in the “Others” category in smartphone market share listings.

Globally Sony Ericsson’s market share in smartphones is approximately 5 percent. So there’s room to grow. The company has also been phasing out it’s feature phones and focusing it’s product development on the Android operating system.

Android and a bunch of new Xperia phones will be the key drivers to growth, said Uddenfeldt. The company has announced six Xperia smartphones that run the Android Gingerbread operating system.

One thing the company is counting on is gaming. The Xperia Play is the first PlayStation Certified smartphone, meaning the phone can run downloadable versions of original PlayStation games and use the PlayStation logo. It even has a slide-out PlayStation controller.

Both AT&T and Verizon will sell the phone when it’s released, but there’s still no official release date available.

While Android is the main focus of the company, it will still have a door open for Windows Phone 7. But it won’t be making any products if the operating system doesn’t take off, Uddenfeldt said. (It did previously manufacture phones with Windows Mobile OS.) Sony Ericsson already announced in September that it will abandon the Symbian operating system for good.