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There are a tonne of Sony Ericsson blogs out there, some good, some bad, and some excellent. In the latter category (along with USEB of course!) is se-blog.com, run by our very own Mizzle! Some of you may already be familiar with it, but for those who aren’t and even if you already visit it regularly go check out their latest update. Mitch has given the site a bit of a facelift and the update is looking pretty sweet! Definitely worth a look!

It’s not been long since my last post, but that was late so this one is on time and it’s been another exciting week in the world of Sony Ericsson! We had the financial results for 2009, Vivaz and some confusion over the X10. We all knew about Kurara of course, but it was nice to finally see it made official, the name though … Vivaz? Sounds a bit like a character from a Spanish soap opera or maybe a washing powder. Will you be taking the Vivaz Doorstep Challenge?

The X10 was also causing a bit of head scratching in some circles with the camera and proximity sensor apparently missing (or covered up) on the Japanese version. So what’s the script? I don’t know, but I have a theory … cost cutting! Sony Ericsson have been trying to save some money recently and so they’ve decided to remove these two features. The forward facing camera won’t be replaced by anything; in a ground breaking piece of market research Sony Ericsson have discovered that no one really uses video calling and they’re just hoping no one actually notices the camera is missing. As for the proximity sensor that will be replaced by a small pin that stabs you when the phone gets close to your face to remind you to lock the screen. Just a theory, you have to want to believe.

The financial results weren’t too hot. Last year saw Sony Ericsson register a pre-tax loss of more than a billion euros. Sony Ericsson themselves are blaming poor sales and a contracting global phone market. Some people are pointing fingers at certain areas of their portfolio as lacking exciting products that can compete with competitors. However, I have to confess something … the loss is my fault. At Christmas I accepted a free advent calendar from Sony Ericsson. I can only begin to imagine the serious economic damage giving me this freebie must have caused them and I am ridden with guilt. I am here publicly offering to post the calendar back to them (with the chocolate still inside) and I will cover postage as well!

Mooooo!

A bit late this week I know, but I’ve been a very busy cow over the past 7 days! Let’s take a stroll through what I’ve been up to …

Of course we were upgrading the forum this past week! Why are we upgrading? Well most of you probably think that it’s to introduce new features and make the forum faster. Nothing could be further from the truth. You see, Ixalon, our man at the controls, is a really good programmer, but he really needs to fix bugs every once in a while and quite simply our previous version of IPB didn’t have enough for him so we had to introduce a whole new set of bugs! You should have seen his little face light up in delight when he saw all the new bugs! scots’, always generous, has been compiling a big list of even more bugs for him so he’ll be happy for weeks to come! (Btw if you are wondering why there isn’t a Mooo! button on the forum it’s because the admins don’t listen to me.)

It’s been a bit of a quiet week for Sony Ericsson, but finally some good news for a change! Their market share in the UK is up! What they didn’t tell you is that is because they have adopted a new selling strategy. Bert Nordberg has hired a transit van and has been touring the UK selling Satios from the back of it. You might have spotted him at your local market in a flat top cap and sheepskin coat with his distinctive selling pitch “Satiooo! Satiooo! Three for a fiveeer! Get your Satiooo ere’”. It seems to be working well. See, we told you Bert would kick some ass!

We also had Faith making an appearance on the tubes. Now let me just say that I know there are already lots of qwerty devices on the market from Samsung and LG and yes I know that Windows Mobile has all the sex appeal of an octogenarian in suspenders and heels and yes almost everyone who has seen it has been violently ill (this clip illustrates it well), but I am not going to criticise it. I am going to be different. I am determined to say one nice thing about it. Let me see … oh I know … it has a white keypad, which will match the white curtains I have in my cow shed (I may be a 2,000 lbs cow, but I do like the place to look nice).

Well that’s all for his week folks! Mooooo!

There are only 2 days left of 2009 and indeed only 2 days left in this decade. With that in mind many blogs have been indulging in retrospectives looking back over the decade and judging what they think are the best and worst gadgets and tech of the past ten years. Whilst Sony Ericsson itself hasn’t actually been around for a full 10 years, this is the end of the first decade they’ve been in business so time for a look back at what they’ve done right … and what they’ve done wrong.

The Good

You can’t get much better than starting at the beginning … the T68i. I still have mine and it still works as well as when it was new. It was ahead of its time and even now it’s a passable mobile phone. Sure it doesn’t have GPS, an inbuilt camera, etc, but the fact that it still works almost 10 years later counts for a lot.

The P800 was Sony Ericsson’s first smartphone, indeed one of the first proper smartphones and looking back a precursor to today’s smartphones with their large touchscreens and installable apps. Compared with current handsets it’s slow, cumbersome, bulky, and generally archaic, but it was the most powerful handset of its day and ushered in the much loved P series.

The K750 and W800 were two of the best handsets Sony Ericsson has ever produced. That’s not just my opinion, look at the sales figures. Look at how many people still look back on them fondly. The W800 heralded the dawn of Walkman phones and for the first time gave consumers the capability to play music on their phone with a quality approaching dedicated mp3 players.

The K800 was arguably Sony Ericsson’s last great handset. It took the K750 and built upon it to give a better camera, a proper flash, 3G data speeds and a pretty attractive form factor. The fact that so many are still in use is a testament to its quality and its popularity.

The Bad

When first announced the W960 was greeted with much enthusiasm; here was a handset with 8 Gb of inbuilt memory, WiFi, and a touchscreen, features, at the time, that were top class and certainly whetted many an appetite. Where did it go wrong? Well it was pretty much down to that old bug bear of Sony Ericsson’s … delays. Wars have been fought and won in less time than it took for the W960 to finally appear on the shelves and by that time consumers had moved on.

The W910 was one of those handsets that should have been great and to be fair it sold well, but that doesn’t disguise the horrendous firmware problems that dogged the handset. Numerous customers reported problems with their handsets and in the end it became a testament to slipping quality, something that was to dog Sony Ericsson in later handsets.

Another handset that suffered from poor quality was the W580 with cracked keypads galore. Like it’s big sister, the W910, it sold well, but left many customers unhappy as their keys split in two. Great sales, but another knocking for Sony Ericsson’s reputation amongst consumers.

In an all too similar situation to the W960 we saw Satio, then dubbed Idou, unveiled to much fanfare and excitement. A 12 MP camera! A first for the mobile industry outside of South Korea and it was Sony Ericsson leading the way. 10 months later the handset finally got itself into the shops and sales began in earnest. The long wait hadn’t helped, but once it was out business was brisk and consumers seemed prepared to overlook that. Disaster was to strike barely a few weeks later though as Satio was pulled from sale in the UK owing to firmware problems. Although it was back on sale soon afterwards the damage was done and again Sony Ericsson’s once high reputation for quality had taken a blow.

The Ugly

Some handsets Sony Ericsson have released over the years deserve to be forgotten, but we’ll dredge them up here anyway!

The K850 might be a surprise on this list for some, but hear me out. The keypad alone is enough to condemn this handset as awful; tiny square peg like keys widely spaced beneath a touch sensitive panel on the screen that was prone to failure does not a good handset make! The fact that the K850 was thicker than a dictionary didn’t help either.

I know Michell will disagree with me here, but Pureness is arguably the biggest waste of time, money and resources Sony Ericsson have ever publicly committed to. A luxury phone with a price tag to match whilst the rest of their line-up suffered from qualitative issues doesn’t strike me as a great idea. It’s quirky sure, but eminently forgettable.

Agree? Disagree? Have I left something out? Let us know in the comments!

… it’s an interesting question to say the least. On the front of it many might say it’s an obvious solution for two manufacturers who aren’t doing too well and who really need some sort of push to get them back in the big time. The WSJ puts across some decent arguments, not the least of which is a speculated saving of 10% on operational costs, something that both companies would no doubt love to see.

Market share is another area that apparently makes a convincing case for a merger. Motorola has around 17% of the American market whilst SE has over 12% of the European market and they each have 10% in China and India respectively. Taking the numbers at face value that would seem like a great match-up, all the major markets covered with a strong presence and each would have access to markets where they have traditionally not been so strong i.e. Europe for Motorola and America for Sony Ericsson.

Android is another area where there could be a great conflux of synergy. Both companies are effectively betting their future performance on the success (or failure) of an Android device; Sony Ericsson has the X10 and Motorola has the Droid/Milestone. Up until now HTC has pretty much led the pack when it comes to Android, but a resurgent SE-Moto partnership focusing on Android might see HTC relegated to second place.

So why not? Well as the saying goes, two wrongs don’t make a right. Just shoving two declining companies together doesn’t guarantee success, all it does is generate some headlines and maybe slashes costs. Far more relevant would be how SE and Moto gel as cultures. Who will lead in R&D? Whose ethos will dominate? Whose ideas will come to the forefront? Don’t forget we aren’t talking about two companies joining up and having a cosy relationship, we’re talking about three companies joining up and having a menage-a-trois. Things haven’t always been peachy between Sony and Ericsson if reports are to be believed, is adding a third player into the mix really going to smooth the decision making process? I think not.

Leaving all that to one side for a moment though we are left with a very fundamental point, fewer manufacturers isn’t great for the consumer. I’m not just talking about direct capitalist competition, but competition in ideas. Homogenising the market into fewer and fewer players ends up leaving it with that little bit less diversity and creativity and that’s a price that’s, in my opinion, too high to pay for a 10% saving on operational costs.