Well here’s a welcome addition to today’s happiness bank: Sony Ericsson is dropping the Memory Stick Micro, Sony’s red hot memory stick platform, for MicroSD. The Memory Stick, if you’ll recall, was Sony’s attempt to rule the roost when it came to memory cards, a strategy that failed so spectacularly that they created an entire sidereal constellation of memory cards outside of the normal collection, ensuring absolute uselessness and incompatibility.

If I was the FCC, I’d start my own gadget blog in light of the fact that I’d have first dibs to all the new gear. Er, wait…nevermind. Scratch that, stick to your federal duties and leave the blogging to us.

Sony Ericsson’s newest (T-Mobile-bound) slider phone, the Cyber-shot CS8 (known elsewhere as the C905), has received approval by the FCC.

So maybe the company/venture isn’t OK as the previously released company statement indicated. Now, a few months later, word hits that 2,000 peeps are about to lose their jobs due to decline sales.

I had the opportunity to test Sony Ericsson’s newest mobile phone, the G9, in Tokyo today. The device is the first KDDI au is selling in Japan under the so-called iida brand. It’s not officially on sale yet, but I could lay my hands on finished versions for a few minutes in a KDDI showroom. The G9 will be available in Japan next week.

Don’t worry: these won’t come out here. The S312 is a 2-megapixel camera phone with dedicated “camera” button for taking impromtu snaps of your friends and relations. It should be available in Q3 2009.

The W205 (shown here) has a 1.3-megapixel camera and FM tuner and supports up to an amazing 2 gigabytes of Memory Stick Micro storage. It should be available in Q3 as well.

How far the mighty have fallen.

Let’s start with a little gem from the press release for this new S-E phone, shall we?

Maria knows that all eyes will be on her this season and thanks to her new T707; she can rest assured that whatever she does, she will look stylish, glamorous and be in control of her life with just the wave of a hand.

Now, to extrapolate, what we are seeing here is the suggestion that Maria Sharapova, besides having a mean arm, knows enough about cellphones to tell if she - or, in actuality, here travel coordinator and assistant - needs a gesture-based cellphone. Wait, what’s that you say? You think S-E paid her to say all those nice things about this otherwise dud of a flip phone? Why you might be right. And there we find the flaw in S-E’s plan for world domination.

Want to know something I learned today? If you forget the power adapter required for making US style plugs play friendly with the outlets in Spain and happen to have arrived on a Sunday, you are screwed. All the stores are closed and, if your hotel is like mine, the “concierge” dude sitting at the front desk watching spanish Futurama doesn’t give a crap. Oh, and I also learned all about the Sony Ericsson “Idou”. Sort of.

It’s stirring. Even in this harsh economy, SE is still launching two phones for MWC, a move that shows SE’s dedication to the status quo and an understanding that consumers want more of the same. In a way, Sony Ericsson is telling the world “Yes, we’re still alive and kicking. Yes, we still have phones. And yes, one is is a mid-level cameraphone for Europe.”

The SE C903 Cyber-shot is a “creative and stylish mobile phone” with swivel screen, 5-megapixel camera, Smile Shutter (TM)(C)(R), BestPic (TM)(C)(R) (a silly system that takes 9 bad pictures in a row and lets you pick the best one). It comes in Lacquer Black, Techno White and Glamour Red and includes aGPS.

Full release after the jump if you need something to nod off to.

Take the 8-megapixel shooter and slider form factor from the Sony Ericsson C905, up the screen from 2.4″ to 2.6″, throw in stereo speakers, dedicated music keys and an oh-so-necessary 3.5mm headphone jack, and stamp on the Walkman logo. What do you get? The Hikaru.

This is what I get for trying to find photos of French TV journalists: air gaming. Apparently it’s a “thing” in Paris right now, along with striking every other day, that was created to help promote Sony Ericsson. One of its new phones has a motion sensor, so SE wanted a hip, cool way to attract eyeballs, and euros. A marketing agency was hired, which then came up with the “air” concept: people were encouraged to take videos of themselves engaged in “air” activities. Think air guitar, only, somehow, less dignified.

Japan’s second biggest mobile phone carrier KDDI au today presented their new cell phones [JP] for this spring. The first handsets will be available in Nippon on Saturday.

And they have a few spectacular models to offer - if only the Japanese carriers did what they promised a few months back (large-scale internationalization due to a shrinking home market), everyone could get their hands on these things.

We caught the Sony Ericsson C903 (previously known as “Frances”) showing off its frontside last week, and now we’re getting a sneak peak of this not-yet-announced Cybershot’s rear.

Long known only by its internal “Frances” moniker, the official model name of this not-yet-announced Sony Ericsson handset has been whispered into the wrong ear and has since found its way to the SEMC Blog; from here on out, the Frances is now the Sony Ericsson C903.

Okay, first three rules of stealing: A) Don’t steal, B) Don’t steal from your employer - not only are they the hand that feeds, but they’ve got your name on all kinds of lists, and C) Don’t friggin’ steal limited run prototypes that only certain people have access to.

When a bunch of junk went missing from the Sony Ericsson labs in Lund, Sweden earlier this week, police got to sleuthing.