Following the flurry of excitement after the release of the official Ice Cream Sandwich source code yesterday, Sony Ericsson is assuring its customers that every Xperia phone made in 2011 will receive an official update. That includes the Xperia arc and arc S, Xperia PLAY, Xperia neo and neo V, Xperia mini and mini pro, Xperia pro, Xperia active, Xperia ray as well as Sony Ericsson Live with Walkman. Of course, not all models are available in all markets.

Sony didn’t give any timeframe on when to expect the updates, but for those who bought their phones on contract, remember that they’re largely contingent upon carriers’ cooperation – a particularly belligerent carrier might choose not to update their phone at all. Other major manufacturers are quoting between six weeks and four months for the first ICS updates, but given the unfortunately spotty history of Android rollouts, it may be quite a while longer before some see any new software. Sony’s reputation on the matter isn’t the best in the Android business, but it’s far from the worst – we’ll see how Sony’s proposed acquisition of Ericsson affects software development.

Sony joins the major Android manufacturers in reiterating to its customers that they’ll be seeing Ice Cream Sandwich at some point. HTC and Samsung have promised updates for those devices that can handle the increased system requirements, and Motorola said that phones running ICS would begin appearing just six weeks after the source code was released. (For the record, that’s right around New Years’s, Moto. Just sayin’.) If you’re brave and at least reasonable technical, community-authored ICS ROMS and mods should begin appearing this week, with more stable and reliable versions to follow.

[via UnwiredView]