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A Sony Ericsson spokesperson came out strong to counter rumors that the struggling cell phone company's eagerly-awaited smartphone, the Xperia X1, was delayed. It hasn't taken long for her to be proven right.

At the CTIA Wireless Show today, Sony Ericsson announced the Xperia X1 will ship on September 30th in the UK, Germany and Sweden. The company's first Windows Mobile smartphone will then find its way to a number of other markets—including several in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, Central Europe, Western Europe and APAC - Indonesia, Singapore, Bangladesh, Cambodia, India, Malaysia, Philippines, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnams—througout the fourth quarter.

Unfortunately, we still have no idea when the Xperia X1 will make it to the U.S. Sony Ericsson does say availability dates for North America, China, Australia and Russia - along with other countries not mentioned yet - will be announced by in the coming months, however.

To generate more interest in the smartphone, Sony Ericsson is going to host a webcast on the 15th to give an in-depth demonstration of the Xperia Xq. You can register for the webcast here.

In addition to the demonstration, Sony Ericsson is going to premier the first episode of Jonhnny X, which they're calling webisodic alternative reality thriller. The Xperia X1 is featured throughout the show, which will be shown over a three week period. One new episode of Johnny X will be posted online at www.sonyericsson.com/Johnnyx every Monday, Wednesday and Friday starting on Monday, September 22.

Here’s what Sony Ericsson has to say about the show:

Johnny X is about a young man with amnesia desperately piecing together his identity. The webisodic thriller comprises of nine episodes, created to demonstrate the rich, immersive and experiential elements of the Xperia(TM) X1.

The storyline follows Johnny X on his mission to rediscover his identity. As he finds out more about his lost life in a race against time, he updates his Xperia X1 with new content to piece together his personality and identity, reflecting how the phone can be personalized to suit users' individual lifestyle and needs. Will Johnny X find out who he really is before it's too late?

"Producing the Johnny X thriller has given us an engaging platform to demonstrate all the capabilities and features a user can experience with the Xperia X1 phone," asserts Sony Ericsson marketing head Lennard Hoornik. "The panel interface is a perfect way to reflect your personality and can be tailored and changed to suit your exact needs at any given time.

Last week, Sony Ericsson released a software development kit (SDK) that allows developers to try their hand at building Xperia X1 Panels and applications. The proprietary panel interface runs on top of Windows Mobile 6.1. The Panels are lightweight applications that extend the phone's 'Today Screen' API to provide a fully customizable user interface on the XPERIA X1. The SDK will be available for free.

In addition to Windows Mobile, the Xperia X1 sports a unique arc slider design. So when you slide up the smartphone's high-resolution 3-inch, WVGA (840 x 480-pixel) touch screen, a wide QWERTY thumb-keyboard is revealed.

For more on the Xperia X1, see the links below.