Today, Ericsson’s showed a renewed interest in its money-losing joint venture with Sony (NYSE: SNE). At the company’s annual shareholder meeting, CEO and President Carl-Henric Svanberg said Ericsson (NSDQ: ERIC) is particularly strong at the moment, and if it was needed, it could inject cash into Sony Ericsson, the fourth-largest handset maker.

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Reuters reported that Svanberg said: “In the situation they are in today it is a natural measure to take that we plan for this so that we have the readiness if it were necessary.” Svanberg added that Sony Ericsson was important to Ericsson because it allowed the company to understand what the end users of its products want, allowing it to create end-to-end telecoms solutions.

Separately, Svanberg told shareholders that Ericsson was in a very strong position as the trend moves toward mobile broadband. Today, only 10 percent of the four billion mobile customers worldwide have mobile broadband,  according to the company’s press release. “We are in the process of building the new IP networks and bringing together today’s fixed and mobile networks. We’re debt-free and by the end of the year we had net cash of SEK 35 billion ($4.2 billion). We have basically no customer financing and extensive cost reduction activities in place. We are market leaders and at the forefront of technological development. The world is experiencing turbulent times, but Ericsson is strong.”