The Sony Ericsson mobile partnership has reported it fourth straight quarterly loss, totalling €213 million.

According to MocoNews, this is actually smaller than analysts anticipated, as sales fell 40 per cent to €1.68 billion. Savings made by the mobile phone giant have been in the form of cutbacks, rather than any recent sales surge, which doesn't bode particularly well for the sustainability of the company's recent cost reducing activities.

Sony Ericsson isn't alone, however. Nokia is back-pedalling on its 2009 target to increase its mobile market share, revising its intentions to simply remain flat in comparison 2008.

As a daunting as the combined losses for these two mobile giants might initially sound, they do reveal some interesting market quirks. Nokia's debut touchscreen handset, the XpressMusic 5800 still managed to move an impressive 3.7 million units in the second quarter, while 500,000 N97s flew off the shelves in tune.

While the global economic downturn can be helping, it is clear that a failure to answer the public's demand for touchscreen enable, feature-rich smartphones is looking like a death sentence for mobile manufacturers.

Sony Ericsson's saviour could easily be the much rumoured PSP phone, though sadly it's likely to be a long way away.