The jist of the speculation centres around an alleged conversation between Sony Ericsson and two Chinese companies back in March where Sony Ericsson is said to have “casually and completely “randomly” asked not whether they are interested to buy the rights to the brand, take all the commitments for the maintenance of offices around the world and content staff.” One of the companies involved is said to have been Foxconn, an electronics company that many of you will probably know better as one of Apple’s suppliers for the iPhone.

You can read Eldar’s full blog entry here.

The first, and perhaps most important, point to make is that the X12 is really not very different from the X10. Sure it has different specifications, but when you look at what is known about these specifications it appears to be very much an evolutionary step rather than a quantum leap, and not a very big evolutionary step at that I might add.

What’s New

Let’s look at what’s new first though. Probably the biggest feature here is multi-touch, something that was long clamoured for with the X10. The screen itself is bigger too, 4.3 inches compared with the X10’s 4 inches and it now supports 16 million colours, up from 65k. There’s a new chipset too, gone is the Snapdragon of the X10 and in its place is the MSM7230. It has the same core as the Snapdragon, but runs at a lower clock speed, 800 Mhz instead of 1 GHz.

The design of the handset has subtlely changed too, now being thinner and lighter. The larger screen means it is ‘taller’ than the X10, but noticeably thinner in the hand.

The Good (Sort Of)

Some have fixated on the chipset used, imagining that a lower clock speed means poorer performance. That’s a simplistic way of looking at things, in fact the MSM7230 has been optimised for multimedia with 720p encoding smoother and playback times increased when compared with the X10. This is important because the X10’s HD video capabilities were brought about through a software upgrade, here the hardware itself is optimised in that direction.

That’s all very well and good, but I haven’t mentioned one important point here; the X12 will be Sony Ericsson’s flagship and it will be aimed, and priced, with a view to competing at the top end of the market. Given the appearance of Tegra 2 dual core powered Android smartphones this year a mid-level chipset just doesn’t cut it in that price bracket, or indeed with customer expectations.

I’m not going to comment on the design changes too much since design is such a subjective issue. Suffice it to say that those who have handled the device so far aren’t falling over themselves to praise the thinner feel of the handset. Rather it seems that the thinner and lighter feel of the handset gives it a ‘cheaper’ feel than the X10.

Does Sony Ericsson Dream of Old Electric Sheep?

In terms of Android the prototypes have been running Eclair (Android 2.1) and there is some speculation now that the device will not in fact ship with Gingerbread after all (Android 2.3), but rather Froyo (Android 2.2).

Let me say that I really hope that this proves untrue, Gingerbread wouldn’t just be nice, it is absolutely crucial for the X12. The X10 shipped with Donut (Android 1.6) at a time when other handsets were looking forward to upgrading to Froyo, two generations of Android beyond Donut. Granted that opting for Froyo would ‘only’ be one generation behind the current generation, but neveretheless it would still be behind.

We also have Sony Ericsson’s notoriously slow update cycle to contend with. X10 owners will know all too well how frustrating it can be to wait months on end for an (outdated) update whilst other manufacturers are zapping their older handsets with fresh Android iterations.

Hardware Software Is Where It’s At

Sony Ericsson’s custom UI is supposed to compensate somewhat for this as it is promoted as ‘adding value’ to the device. In other words Sony Ericsson is trying to compensate for the deficiency in hardware when compared with rival handsets and the slow update cycle with software improvements. We saw this with the X10 too, the addition of HD video capture, for example, and the implementation of multi-touch.

There are various problems with this approach. Firstly it leads to a situation, in which Sony Ericsson lag behind on hardware features because they think they can implement them through software at a later date. It’s also a poor reflection on Sony Ericsson’s view of its customers since they are being asked to part with the price of a very high-end handset, but aren’t given the hardware to match the price. This is especially galling when it comes to ‘basic’ functionality like multi-touch.

Last, but most certainly not least, Sony Ericsson’s ’software cures all ills’ approach is completely undermined by the number, and severity, of bugs that creep into their devices. The X10 WiFi bug, for example, has been a major headache for many customers.

A Market Segment Too Far

What we have with the X12 is a handset that looks like it could do some decent business, probably even great business, if it were priced in the mid-range of the market, but certainly not at the top-end. Samsung, LG, HTC, etc will be releasing handsets this year in the same high-end category as the X12, but they will outshine it in terms of the hardware. So why should customers buy an X12 when they can get a handset that is ’stronger, faster, better’ for the same price, or even less?

I don’t mean to seem pessimistic about the X12, but on balance it’s looking more like an X10 with some of the faults users complained about most fixed. That might have cut the mustard last year, but this is a new year with new customer expectations and Sony Ericsson seems, as ever, to be playing catch-up.

Form Factor

The Galaxy Tab has been labelled by some, including Google’s own Andy Rubin, as a ‘large cellphone’. Personally I don’t think that’s a good thing for a device that’s supposed to be helping to establish its own market segment. Sony Ericsson should take note here and release a device that looks, feels, and behaves like a tablet and they shouldn’t be afraid of limiting features either. The Galaxy Tab can make phone calls helping to reinforce the ‘large cellphone’ image. Why? It’s supposed to be a tablet device, if I want to make a phone call I’ll use my mobile.

Price

At £799 on Amazon UK the Galaxy Tab isn’t exactly what you would call affordable. Ok that is the highest we’ve seen it and other retailers offer it for less, but still, is that the best we can do? The iPad starts at just over £400. Sony Ericsson have a bit of a bad reputation for producing devices that aren’t competitive in terms of price so this is definitely an area that they would need to be mindful of. Let’s not follow the Samsung examples here please chaps.

Purpose

The Galaxy Tab, as I alluded to above, doesn’t seem to know what it wants to be. Is it a tablet? Is it a phone? A clear sense of purpose is crucial to success, trying to cram in as many features as possible, whilst good on paper, ends up leaving you with a mess that simply confuses consumers. Keep it focused. Keep it simple.

Timing

For the love of God get a tablet device out soon Sony Ericsson! Sure there is a school of thought that says it is better to wait and release something good rather than rush things, but at the same time Sony Ericsson have been playing ‘catch up’ with just about every major trend over the past few years. It would give them a real chance to capture some mindshare if they could just get a device out ahead of the curve for once.

Flame Bait

On the face of it the article looks to be little more than flame bait, but I started reading it with the expectation that the sensationalist headline was masking a thought provoking article that laid out some interesting ideas on Android’s growth. I was rather disappointed because flame bait is pretty much what the article is, the author himself admits to being something of an iPhone fanboy.

The central argument of the article is that Android is seeing such spectacular growth because the iPhone is currently restricted to AT&T whereas Android handsets are available on pretty much all networks. Ok fair point, restricting access to the iPhone will obviously retard sales somewhat, but there are glaring errors in the hypothesis.

There Is a Big World Out There

The article is completely American centric and takes no account of what’s happening elsewhere in the world. Ok fine, the site itself is American so you would expect a heavy focus on America. However, both Android and the iPhone are global brands and ignoring their global performance in favour of a parochial view is like saying Spain is an unpopular holiday destination just because you have never been, never mind what anyone else is doing.

The author makes several criticisms of Android, some of which are perfectly valid points e.g. its user experience not being quite as polished as the iPhone’s. He makes the following claim though “While I obviously understand that people have different tastes, I can’t see how you can objectively say that the overall experience of using an Android phone isn’t worse than using an iPhone.”

He starts off by making a very pertinent point about personal preference and then immediately contradicts himself by defining it in terms of an absolute. The reason many people prefer Android is just that, personal preference. If everyone liked the same thing there would only be one mobile phone. Similar to the American-centric point it’s a case of the author basing his stance on his own opinion and everyone else be damned.

Some Of Us Still Like Choice

If we look at the matter a little more objectively what we find is Android expanding very rapidly in just about every market that it is available in. This includes markets, like the UK, where the iPhone is freely available on a number of networks, and yet many people still choose an Android device. That rather moots the point about networks restrictions.

It’s also worth pointing out that people will choose Android over the iPhone for various reasons, not all to do with the, arguably vapid, concern about the UI. Price is an obvious factor, with many Android handsets being a good deal cheaper than the iPhone. Form factor can be another consideration. Maybe memory card support is of interest to some? Perhaps a particular customer doesn’t want to use iTunes?

Whatever the reasons behind the choice to go with Android it’s an incredibly arrogant stance to take that it must be defined in terms of the iPhone. Perhaps if the author of the piece could put down his iPhone for five minutes he might realise that many people genuinely don’t care or want an iPhone and choose Android, Symbian, or whatever else based upon its own merits.

We’ve been running  a poll on which OS Sony Ericsson should drop for some time now and I thought it was about time to offer some comments on it. Let me start by explaining a little about why we put that poll up.

… X10 owners can’t use it because it’s only available for Android 2.1 and above. Granted this may not be the greatest injustice in human history, but it is pretty annoying and it’s the thin edge of a rather annoying wedge that will grow wider and wider until Sony Ericsson finally do release the 2.1 update for the X10. There are probably more than a few apps that X10 owners can’t take advantage of at the moment, but, what could end up being, the best Twitter client for Android is one app that might very well induce pangs of annoyance that we don’t have 2.1 right now.

Roll on update day …

[via Gizmodo]

The actual quote is from the Sony Ericsson Product blog:

Will it have multi-touch in future updates?

Xperia X10 has a capacitive screen. It does not support multi-touch functionality at launch, but is considered for the future.

There are three key points to note about the above quote. The first is that it says the handset won’t support multi-touch at launch, which we all knew of course. The second is that it says multi-touch is being considered for a future update. The third, and perhaps most crucial point, is that this is from Sony Ericsson themselves. So what happened?

Well as far as I can tell there are two possibilities:

• Sumit Malhotra, the X10’s Global Marketing Manager, and author of the above quote, got it wrong and simply didn’t know that the X10’s hardware didn’t support multi-touch
• Rikard Skogberg, got it wrong and doesn’t know the exact hardware specifications of the X10’s screen

So which is it? Well we don’t know for sure, but I’m putting my money on Mr Malhotra having gotten it wrong. He’s the marketing manager for the product, and with the greatest of respect to him, I don’t think it’s a huge leap of the imagination to say that it’s not beyond the realms of possibility that he simply wasn’t given a detailed enough account of the screen specifications back when he made his comments. He saw that it was a capacitive touchscreen and may have assumed, like many of Sony Ericsson’s customers it has to be said, that the actual hardware would indeed support multi-touch.

This is just speculation of course, but hopefully Mr Malhotra or Mr Skogberg will be able to clear the matter up soon.

On the first point Mr Vautier was able to approach the question from a position of strength,. He made mention of the ‘Fab 5′ of course and reaffirmed that the X10 and Vivaz were key launch products for SE. He also mentioned that there would be a total of 16 new devices released in the UK & Ireland this year (including the Fab 5). That means we still have another 11 to go. Of course a number of them probably won’t be super high-end devices, indeed Mr Vautier made it clear that the Walkman brand was here to stay when he said that there would be a number of Walkman products from around the middle of the year and that they would be in the £100 range. That would indicate somewhere in the mid-range of the market.

Mr Vautier was also keen to point out that the overall portfolio this year, including some handset from last year, would be 26 handsets, which he hailed as a major reduction. This ties in with some opening remarks he made about how SE wasn’t going after market share or numbers. Of course they aren’t really in a position to go after marketshare or numbers at the moment, so there’s a bit of spin here, but the basic idea is sound.

In terms of quality Mr Vautier gave the answer that was pretty much expected of him … SE are taking steps to improve the situation. He gave some examples of how they’re doing that such as cutting the number of components they use to improve testing efficiency and restructuring their KPI system (key performance indicator) so that it focused on qualitative issues. He was eager to stress just how much work SE had done over the past 18 months to address the issues, but the proof is in the pudding as the saying goes. It’s easy enough to spot comments from concerned customers over upcoming products like the X10 so SE really do have to get these new handsets right first time to restore some of the confidence and trust they’ve lost.

You can read the full interview here.

Let’s deal with the handsets first though. The big news of the night was of course the extension of the X10 family of handsets. Not only did we see Robyn become official, but also the X10 Mini Pro, a QWERTY version of Robyn. The fact that there are now three X10 handsets underscores just how important this family of products is to Sony Ericsson. The X10 itself has been grabbing many a blog headline and stoking many a tweet over the past few months and now we have two variants. Some are saying tha the X10 Mini and Mini Pro are underwhelming, but I disagree. Here we have another two Android handsets and importantly we have some choice in how to approach Android from Sony Ericsson. Not everyone goes for a big touch sensitive slab and now they have a choice of a smaller version or even a QWERTY version. Isn’t choice the very thing many of us have been saying is lacking in SE’s portfolio? Similarly Vivaz Pro is a welcome addition. Yes it is pretty much the same as Vivaz, but it at least taps into the zeitgeist; QWERTY handsets have been very popular in recent months as have touchscreens. It’s about time SE got in on the action. All these handsets were given release dates of Q2. Do we believe them? I’ll leave that to you to make up your mind about …

Some interesting comments came out of tonight’s events. During the Q&A session Sir Howard Stringer, President of Sony, was asked about comments he had made 2 years ago saying he was disappointed with SE’s performance.

Q. “Two years ago, you said that you weren’t happy with the performance of Sony Ericsson. What changed?”

Stringer: “I don’t remember what I said last week, much less two years ago“.

That will be reassuring to Sony’s shareholders! However, Sir Howard also said “We fully support Bert and his team at Sony Ericsson” and he rounded off the night by stating that he was “… feeling a minor wave of euphoria right now“. Why is that so important? Because it might finally to put to bed any rumours of Sony pulling out of the joint venture with Ericsson.

Talking about the mobile market in general Stringer predicted mobiles would take on ever more roles from wallets to keys to I.D. Of course much of that is actually reality today in Sony’s home market of Japan so it’s not a great leap to project it onto the rest of the world. However, it is reassuring to know that these sort of ideas are being discussed and put forward at Sony Ericsson for the rest of the globe.

Not to be outdone Bert ‘Ass Kicker’ Nordberg made a very strong statement at the start of the event: “Going forward, I think you’ll see we have the most quality products in the wireless industry“. Those are big words indeed and whilst some might scoff and deride Mr Nordberg let’s just take a moment to appreciate what it is exactly he is saying here. Reading between the lines he is saying that he knows SE haven’t been at the top of their game, but that he wants that to change and he is setting the goal at nothing short of being the best of the best. Unrealistic? I don’t think so and it’s good to see SE setting themselves such lofty goals because nothing short of excellence is what they need right now. Go Bert go!

Bert shot straight from the hip again later on in the event when someone mentioned Satio’s software issues and asked about the new devices:

Q. “Will these new devices be spot-on?”

Bert: (firmly) “Yes.”

No messing about from Bert there!