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Will they? Won’t they? What am I talking about? The release date of the X10 of course! Only a few days ago we’d heard that the release date might have been pushed back to March, but then there seemed to be talk of it making an appearance in February after all. The initial date we were all looking forward to was 10th February, but that has almost certainly been pushed back, the question is then, how far back?

PlayNow are already taking pre-orders for the X10, SIM free, for £499. They’re giving a due date of 19th February, not all that far off the initial 10th February that had been bandied around. For their part Sony Ericsson aren’t giving an exact date, the Mirror quoting unspecified company executives as having told them, at the initial announcement, that the launch would be Q1 of this year. That is in keeping with a 19th February release date, but of course it is also in keeping with a release date some time in March.

To some the whole thing might seem a bit academic; February or March, what does it matter? Putting the impatience of geeks like myself to one side, a March release would do two things; it would further reinforce Sony Ericsson’s growing reputation as a company that can’t get its products out in time and secondly it would give the competition that little bit longer to steal a march on the X10. The MWC is held in the midle of February, the 15th-18th to be exact, and it will actually make some difference which side of the MWC the X10 becomes available.

If it’s before the MWC the X10 will have a relatively unfettered field to play in as the newest high-end Android. It will have an easier time of capturing mindshare amongst consumers, especially given that other high-end Android handsets like the Nexus One or the Droid aren’t widely available in much of Europe yet. After MWC the X10 may find itself competing with newly announced products from other manufacturers, and whilst those newly announced products may not actually be available to consumers, they will still have an impact and possibly persuade customers to forgo the X10 and  hold out a little longer.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 13th, 2010 at 10:56 pm and is filed under Opinion, android, x-series, xperia. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.