To be frank, Sony Mobile is not a giant in the smart phone market where the rulers are Apple and Samsung. It\’s a truth that Sony makes quality hardware but still their phones lose the game to Samsung and other smart phone manufacturers. Even if it\’s hard time for the company, Dennis van Schie, CVP Sales & Marketing at Sony Mobile Communications has not lost the confidence and he hopes Sony will emerge on top in the near future.

He says, “We will create in the near future a flagship model that can compete with Apple’s iPhone and Samsung’s Galaxy S III,”. This flagship model is expected to be announced in early 2013 at CES in Las Vegas in January or in the Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona in February 2013. Also Sony will prioritize in stronger content integration by providing cross-device support for Sony music and video content.

Speaking to Financial Times Deutschland, Van Schie said that Sony has not given up developing on Windows even if the priority is for Android.  “We have a good relationship with Microsoft and we are watching the development of Windows Phone closely. If it succeeds, we will not be caught off guard.”, he said.

Source: Xperiablog

There were many rumors that Sony delays the phone to Q1/2013. But around 20 minutes ago Sony Mobile GB announced the release of their new flagship Sony Xperia T. It will hit the shops today for around 540 €. Do you think it is a good iPhone 5 competitor?

Source: Sony Mobile GB @ Facebook

Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. (SCE) has officially announced the release date of  Playstation Store for Playstation Mobile devices. The store will go live on October 3 2012. Initially the service will start in Japan, US, Canada, UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and Australia with more countries to follow suit. 30 new titles under ‘Adventure’, ‘Action’, ‘Puzzle’, ‘Sports’, and ‘Simulation’ categories will be launched with the price range between 50 yen (£0.39, €0.49, $0.64) and 850 yen (£6.68, €8.31, $10.84).

If you didn’t know it already, Sony ’s range of Playstation certified devices include Xperia arc, Xperia PLAY, Xperia S, Xperia SL, Xperia ion, Xperia acro S, Xperia TX, Xperia T , Xperia V, Xperia acro, Xperia acro HD, Xperia SX, Xperia GX,Sony Tablet S, Sony Tablet P and new Xperia Tablet S. Third party devices including  HTC One X, HTC One S, and HTC One V are also PlayStation certified. Fujitsu’s ARROWS series smartphones and some SHARP devices are also in the PlayStation certified license program.

PlayStation Mobile SDK will be available to the developers in November 2012. The initial roll out of the SDK will be for 11 countries listed as Japan, US, Canada, UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Australia, Hong Kong and Taiwan. The SDK will allow the devs to develop games and market it through the Playstation Store under a license agreement for US$99 annually.

Source : Sony Via Xperiablog

Joining the ICS party with Xperia S and Xperia P is Xperia ion LTE (LT28i). The phone gets Android 4.0.4 and the new firmware gets the version number 6.1.E.1.19. There is no information at the moment whether the firmware is something different from whats running on Xperia S and Xperia P. The update has started to roll out in Hong Kong and Taiwan and the other regions are expected to follow suite.

Source : Xperiablog

Sony Mobile executive Kunimasa Suzuki said that the company has no plans to release any Windows phones in the near future, and that’s contradictory to what we thought! As said by the Ex-Sony Ericsson President Bert Nordberg, Sony will be focusing on to releasing more Android devices than diversifying the product portfolio. Also, Suzuki mentioned that they will be reducing costs and bringing new smartphones to the market as a solution to the losing market share of the company’s Android powered smart phones.

Source : Die Welt Via Phonearena

Along with the Three and Vodafone, O2 will also be bringing the newly announced Xperia T to UK. A couple of pictures from O2 inventory has leaked which gives us a clue that Xperia T (LT30p Mint) is in their list. The interesting part about the story is that the phone will be known “The Bond Phone” when it’s launched.

The phone will come only in the black variant but will get the various 007 goodies like the 007 ringtone, themes, screensavers and SKYFALL images geo-tagged to the film’s locations plus exclusive James Bond packaging. Also, you’ll get the 007 Legends game on PS3, XBOX 360 or PC free for a limited time. The handset is listed as “Coming soon” in the O2 website and it’s expected to reach the market by the end of this month.

Source : Xperiablog

Sony engineer Takuya Inaba rips apart the newly announced Xperia tablet S and has released a blog post explaining  the components of the 1.4 GHz quad-core powered machine. Here’s the teardown video:

Click here to view the embedded video.

The video is somewhat limited in delivering the whole idea of the process but you can check the blog post for more details including the tear down pictures.

Source : Sony blog Via GSMArena

The all three versions of the new Sony Table S is now on sale in the US. It’s now available in Sony Store and Newegg. The 16GB version (SGPT121US), 32GB version (SGPT122US) and the 64GB version (SGPT123US) are priced at $399.99, $499.99 and $599.99 respectively.

There are a wide variety of new accessories available too:

See the review of Tablet S on newegg TV:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Sony Mobile’s UK & Ireland MD Pierre Perron talked to Mobile Magazine during the IFA event 2012 and they got a scoop on Sony’s future plans to develop on Windows platform. He said:

‘Sony’s strategy is one of openness. Microsoft is a Sony partner with the likes of our VAIO laptops and it’s integrated onto our tablets. As far as Xperia smartphones go, Android remains the preferred partner, although Sony is not a single partner company. We are currently investigating with the likes of Microsoft the possibility of diversifying our product strategy.’

Other manufacturers including Nokia, Samsung and HTC are highly interested in Windows phone development but Sony seems to be concentrating on Android. We did see an official statement from the Ex-Sony Ericsson President Bert Nordberg that Sony is aiming to be the number one Android manufacturer, but that’s not a feasible solution to boost the sales even if Android is the most popular mobile platform around the world. Developing on the various mobile platforms and releasing a variety of phones will actually make the company versatile resulting in an overall intelligence and thereby snatching a prominent fan base.

Source : Mobile Magazine via Xperiablog

If you own any of the Xperia NXT devices or any other phones released in 2012 you might be already dealing with the new Sony media applications , mainly the ‘WALKMAN’, ‘Films’ and the ‘Album’.  Sony has already developed advanced versions of the apps for the upcoming Xperia smart phones. Anyway, the company has issued an official statement that the 2011 Xperia smart phones will not receive the new media apps but then the 2012 Xperias will recieve it via software updates later this year.

Source : Xperiablog , GSMArena