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SE Admits to Over-Diversification & Talks About Future Smartphones
Mats Lindoff, Sony Ericsson’s Chief Technology Officer, has perhaps been taking lessons from Steve Ballmer as he has been dropping sound bites galore this past week. Let’s start with the over-diversification …
As any self-respecting Sony Ericsson fan will know Sony Ericsson have been announcing and cancelling handsets like it’s going out fashion over the past year. Some have been wee gems like the G900 or the C902, others have been … well less than stellar. There have been a lot of handsets and to be blunt some of them have been either unnecessary given the existence of other handsets in SE’s portfolio or just haven’t added much to the market that previous handset’s didn’t already offer. It seems that Sony Ericsson is finally confirming what the rest of us already knew, namely that they over-diversified.
The admission started last week when Sony Ericsson President Hideki Komiyama said that he is aware that Sony Ericsson has problems and that they are working on innovative products. Now we have Mr Lindoff, speaking at the launch of PlayNow Plus, saying that Sony Ericsson over-diversified in Q3:
There were probably too many devices in the portfolio in Q3. We developed products that have not been ranged by operators. It makes no sense to develop it if we are not damn sure it’s ranged.
It’s good to see Sony Ericsson recognising this issue because hopefully it signals the start of a turn around for the company that sees them release great handsets again like they did in their early days with the likes of the T68i, the T610, the P800, and the K750.
Mr Lindoff had more to say though as he also talked about Sony Ericsson’s smart phone plans. He made the claim that the X1 is primarily aimed at the U.S. market, which seems a little strange given that it will be released there after being released in European markets:
Operators have demanded a Windows Mobile device for the past five years so it’s driven by them for enterprise customers. Yes, you could say it is primarily for the US market.
The claim isn’t so strange when taken in this context given that Windows Mobile has arguably a stronger presence, or at least a stronger image, in the American market than it does in European markets where Symbian rules the roost.
Mr Lindoff wasn’t one for stopping and he continued his comments by talking about smart phone platforms. Android, Google’s open source mobile platform, is something that Sony Ericsson are apparently interested in at least, but Lindoff was cautious in commiting to it. He commented that Sony Ericsson might develop an Android handset, presumably as part of the Xperia line given previous comments by Sony Ericsson to the effect that Xperia isn’t tied to WinMo. However, he cited a lack of resources as preventing Sony Ericsson from realising this any time soon.
Symbian Foundation appears to be more important to Sony Ericsson though as Sony Ericsson already have Symbian Foundation handsets in development, with the first coming next year as part of the Xperia line. The good news for mobile geeks is that it is promised to be very high-end! Lindoff is quoted as saying:
We will launch a Symbian Foundation handset in the next year. There will be really high-end Xperia devices.
Sony Ericsson should allow Mats Lindoff to speak more often!
Source: Mobile News
Filed under: Future, News, Operating platform, Symbian, Technology, Upcoming, Windows Mobile, X series, XPERIA
(7 votes, average: 3.29 out of 5)
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All I can say is: very good news!
Pretty excited about the “really high-end Xperia device”, but curious about the OS it’s going to run on…
Whatever OS Symbian Foundation ends up producing presumably.
I can’t believe they actually admitted this!
Well, things can only get better from now on… I think.
As I said in the article NightBlade, it’s hopefully the first step towards them doing something about it.
Yeah, well… That Lindoff… read in a swedish newspaper the other day that he said regarding how things are going for SE that “well, you can say that is going both good and bad”… that said whilst they are getting rid of hundreds of employees in Sweden…
He seems solid enough! *LOL*
Great stuff and excellently written, Scots
[...] 4, 2008 by jjlifeblog Dari Unofficial Sony Ericsson Blog [...]
About the over-diversification- I remember Rikko Sakaguchi mentioning this in a Q & A session after Dick Komiyama. He said that their current consumer model obsolete- to have phones focused only on camera features, or only on music features- he said that categorizing people so much becomes ’stupid’. This was in the following video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80F5FwY8DgM&eurl=http://blog.se-nse.net/page/2/. So it really seems like we are going to see this change- hopefully to more of a balanced price-feature set ratio (ie low end has the most basic of features in every area, high end has most comprehensive feature set in every area). It will be interesting to see what becomes of this.
“Operators have demanded a Windows Mobile device for the past five years so it’s driven by them for enterprise customers. Yes, you could say it is primarily for the US market.”
This is no surprise first off here in America nobody even know what the hell Symbian is I know because when i had my n82 and i was telling people about symbian people were like saying what the hell is that?
WM market here in America has grown substantially to the point where it is now being mass produced by all carriers as WM Master HTC is part of both CDMA and GSM networks here in America. Here is a quote from WIKI:
“Microsoft projected in 2008 that shipments of devices with Windows Mobile will increase from 11 million to 20 million units, but it missed its initial goal in only selling 18 million licenses citing the delayed launch of certain smartphones.”
This say Xperia all over it LOL but my point is look how much it has grown from 11 million to 18 million that’s Humungous jump!
“He commented that Sony Ericsson might develop an Android handset, presumably as part of the Xperia line given previous comments by Sony Ericsson to the effect that Xperia isn’t tied to WinMo.”
This is a great idea give the consumer “MORE CHOICES”!!! This would be great could you imagine if they said hey you can buy an xperia X1 in either WM or Android flavors? That way business men could go with WM while consumers go with Android they could test the market this way and see what ends up being a bigger success under what demograph also SE would be one of the first with android with HTC being the first overall, Android has a bright future and if you don’t believe that you are riding the apple bandwagon i wish both SE and Android the best but DO IT SE don’t get left behind it’s time to take a lead!
[quote]We will launch a Symbian Foundation handset in the next year. There will be really high-end Xperia devices.[/quote]
Launching a Symbian Foundation OS Handset next year … sounds great. That is just the first sentence! The next sentence says really high-end Xperia devices. Previous quote mentioned that the Xperia is not tied to the WinMo, then I doubt the high end Xperia devices will be tied to the Symbian Foundation OS. That was a completely different sentence without the new OS mentioned within it.
“We will launch a Symbian Foundation handset in the next year. There will be really high-end Xperia devices.”
Maybe that 12.1 MP Camera phone that is said to come out next year is some what getting true.
If WM was meant for American market, how come X1 is so late to arrive? and now that there is a X1a, it’ll take even longer to arrive.. way to go!
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It isn’t “So long to arrive”, it was just announced early. Track back the developmental time of the handset and you’ll see it’s been quite normal. Stop demanding that the newspaper arrives yesterday.
12 mpx or not…..
In my opinion SE should work fore better sensors and optics insteed of more mpx.. And why not a very nice VGA display for us to watch other incredible good picture at…..