The closures, which will see Sony Ericsson’s North American headquarters moved to Atlanta, will result in the loss of some 2,000 jobs. This a little more than a year after the joint venture’s last big round of layoffs, part of a companywide cost-cutting plan that also left about 2,000 people unemployed.

“There would be no question that I would be perfect to run it,” Karmazin said. “But there is no chance that I will ever take another job outside of Sirius XM. I just renewed my contract. It’s exactly what I want.”

Exactly what he wants, except maybe for that perennially-under-a-dollar share price–though according to Karmazin, that’s going to change. “I think today, you’ll start to see quarter after quarter of growth,” he said. “You’ll see us making free cash flow. You’ll see us with…over $2.5 billion of revenue. We’ll start to make money, and we’ll start to keep investing in content. And I think our future will be great.”

Unassuming guy, that Karmazin…

With V-Block, clients can build “private clouds” from which to draw computing resources. It’s an ambitious effort designed to capture a bigger piece of the IT infrastructure market by offering large unified systems designed to handle most of a business’s computing needs. As Cisco CEO John Chambers noted earlier today, the goal here is to more effectively target the market for cloud infrastructure and services, a market that could be worth as much as $350 billion.

It’s also a market loaded with with fierce competitors, IBM (IBM) and Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) among them. Not that this worries Chambers much. “Will this change the industry?” he asked during a conference call today. “Time will tell. I believe that it will be the partnership that people will look back on and say it changed the data center and clouds forever.”

“Despite having fully achieved the original merger integration savings objectives of Nokia Siemens Networks, changes in the global economy and competitive environment make further cost reductions necessary,” the company said.

This morning the struggling handset maker tapped Nordberg, executive vice president of Ericsson, as its new president and CEO. He’ll replace Dick Komiyama, who has apparently decided to retire, though he is smack dab in the middle of implementing the restructuring program that was intended to reinvigorate Sony Ericsson.

“The Sony Ericsson transformation program I began over a year ago is more than half way completed, and I am pleased with what we have achieved so far,” Komiyama said in a statement. “I believe it is the right time for me to begin transferring the leadership of the company to a person who is able to complete the transformation program and lead Sony Ericsson through its next phase of development.”

The right time, indeed. Over the past few years, Sony Ericsson has been overtaken in the high-end handset market by Research in Motion (RIMM), Apple (AAPL) and Samsung and beaten into submission in the low-end market by Nokia (NOK). Among the top five cellphone vendors, Sony Ericsson saw the steepest drop in sales from the first quarter, down 40 percent year-over-year, and continued losses at the joint venture have prompted some to speculate that it could be broken up.

That’s clearly not the case at the moment, though it could be if Nordberg doesn’t manage to speed up that transformation program. Said Nordberg: “Sony Ericsson has taken leadership in the music phones and the camera phones with the Cybershot and the Walkman, but there are some weaknesses in the smartphone segment and we need to restore that.”

Reports claim that Microsoft Live Search, once known as Windows Live Search and, prior to that as MSN Search, will henceforth be known as…

Bing.

Which is pretty much what we’ve expected all along. Just what form Bing will take is another matter entirely. Will it simply be Live Search updated and recast? Or will it involve something more? Like perhaps that long-rumored deal with Yahoo (YHOO) BoomTown’s been talking about? Or what if, ZDNet’s Mary Jo Foley speculates, “Microsoft and Yahoo announce some kind of jointly-managed company that will trade ad sales for search engine placement. This ‘MicroHoo’ won’t be a merged Microsoft-Yahoo. Instead it will be some kind of ad/search entity.” What if, indeed. We may find out later this week.

UPDATE: Interesting. ZDNet’s Larry Dignan points to a report from Jeffries analyst Katherine Egbert that suggests Microsoft is indeed preparing for some sort of joint venture or acquisition. A quick excerpt:

“It’s also possible that Microsoft could debut a partnership or make an acquisition of some type that will bolster its online search presence. The software giant registered an LLC Corp. in Delaware last week, a move often made in advance of acquisitions or joint ventures. The registration gave rise to widespread speculation that Microsoft would acquire Citrix since the name of the LLC is somewhat similar to Microsoft’s code name for Citrix. While that’s possible, the timing of the registration and recent debt raise indicate that it might be more likely Microsoft uses the LLC to form a partnership that will boost the amount of traffic flowing through its search engine, perhaps through a partnership with Yahoo! or others.”

Now we know why Ericsson declined to offer a specific business outlook for 2009 when it last reported earnings. That said, the company seems to believe that the effects of global recession on its business are limited so far. Investments in wireless networks apparently continue apace, econalypse be damned.

“I think we have had a decent start of the year,” CEO Carl-Henric Svanberg said during a conference call with analysts. “We continue to gain market share. We had several strategic wins, we’re doing good in managed–both networks and managed services. There are some but still limited effects from the economic recession and still I think this is not the time to be too precise and predicting but realize that this is a very unusual time.”

Sony (SNE) has no plans to divest its stake in Sony Ericsson, but it is divesting itself of something else: the executive charged with overseeing the joint venture. Najmi Jarwala, the president of Sony Ericsson’s operations in North America, is leaving the company at the end of March. Why? “To pursue other career opportunities.”

“It has been an incredibly rewarding time for me and we have achieved a lot together in North America,” Jarwala said in a statement. “We have introduced an increasing number of new products, grown market share, built operator relationships and, perhaps most importantly, have laid the foundation for North America to play a key role in the long term growth and success of Sony Ericsson.”

An incredibly rewarding time. Really?

An interesting choice of words coming as it does just days after Sony Ericsson said it expects to post an ugly loss for its first quarter–its fourth consecutive one–amid waning customer demand for its largely unexciting handsets.

A bold move for AMD (AMD), which has sustained seven straight quarters of losses, and one that could dramatically alter its fortunes. Indeed, right off the bat, AMD will push $1.2 billion in debt off its books and onto those of the The Foundry Co. “This is the biggest announcement in our history” said CEO chief executive, Dirk Meyer. “This will make us a financially stronger company, both in the near term and in the long term, as a result of being out from the capital expense burden we have had to bear.”