(Upstart) Call it Super Sunday hangover--although I still maintain my condition was caused by bad shellfish in my neighbor’s traditional Super Bowl bouillabaisse--but everywhere I look I see telecom and communications powerhouses throwing away the playbook and improvising on the field in an attempt to gain ground in tough times.

Among the latest and greatest rule-breakers is Ericsson. On Friday, the No. 3 mobile phone maker said it would outsource its handset manufacturing and concentrate on network infrastructure products and systems. The reason: a wireless market once thought to be years away from the saturation is plateauing at a level much lower than expected. Where its competitors--primarily Nokia, Motorola and Siemens--are expecting the global market for mobile phones to hit 525 million to 575 million this year, Ericsson sees a stall at 500 million to 540 million.

That slower growth lead Ericsson to believe that its own sales will be flatter, its margins tighter and its chances of increasing market share slimmer. The company predicted that its sales this year would grow by 15%--short of its expected target north of 20%, while unit margins would shrink from 10% to 6% to 8%.

So Ericsson has decided to outsource the entire manufacture of its branded phones. It will still run the research, design, branding and marketing of the units, but it will farm out actual production to Flextronics, a U.S. manufacturer.

The fact that one of the best-known names in wireless handsets, with a 10% share of the global market--admittedly down from 15% a few quarter ago--can’t make a go of the full phone production cycle says that many other less secure communications players may also have to do some fancy broken-field running to stay in the game.

Nor is Ericsson’s sidestep guaranteed to succeed. The company has a large investment tied up in networking gear for next generation wireless services--the ones that promise to bring us faster, more fully featured mobile access to the Web and other IP delights. But Ericsson CEO Kurt Hellstrom left the door open for an outright sale of the handset business, warning that the company had no intention of staying in mobile phones, “at any cost.” In the past, Ericsson has maintained that having a hand in cell phone development and sales helped its systems business.

The bottom line is that Ericsson couldn’t keep pace with the swift commoditization of the cell phone market. Phones have gotten cheaper, and consumers have been more willing to replace their old units with another manufacturer’s brand if they like the look and functions of someone else’s product. Ericsson couldn’t produce those sexy features quickly enough and cheaply enough. So it has said, ‘Enough.’

Analysts aren’t convinced that outsourcing handsets will solve Ericsson’s problems. Yes, the mobile phone division lost $1.7 billion last year while the rest of the company earned $3.4 billion. But the company has bet heavily on the adoption of new advanced wireless systems worldwide and in fact will double its investment in that technology, according to Hellstrom. At the same time, slow 3G take-up rates suggest that margins will be almost as problematic in these areas over the next few years as they have become in cell phone sales.

That’s not what your teammates want to hear when it’s fourth down and 20 yards to go. Ericsson has taken a bold step to change the direction of play; now it has to hope that there’s enough time left on the clock to score some points.

Editor-in-Chief Brian Quinton swears that he only looks at the point spread for entertainment purposes. His e-mail address is brian_quinton@intertec.com.