Hullo! Sony Ericsson Chooses Windows Mobile
by Ewan Spence
The Mobile World Congress is all about raising eyebrows – with s many new phones, services, products and ideas being announced, pre-announced or reaching the public’s hands in Barcelona this week, you need to make some big moves if you want to get noticed. Nokia, as expected, have rolled out a veritable smorgasbord of phones, social networks and product options that they can capture the news cycle for a few hours.
Other Symbian partners joined in as well, with handsets from LG, Samsung and Sony Ericsson all announcing on Sunday night, probably to get some time in the blogosphere before the Finnish juggernaut arrives. But what pricked up my ‘Industry Radar’ was Sony Ericsson’s non-Symbian phone, the Xperia 1. Not because it’s a metal encased handset, nor the qwerty keyboard or the ‘arc slider.’ It’s the operating system.
This is Sony Ericsson’s first Windows Mobile powered device.
For a company that is so closely associated with Symbian OS, to the point of buying the UIQ interface from Symbian and setting it up as a subsidiary company (and then bringing Motorola into the UIQ fold by splitting the company 50/50 with then), this is a very interesting piece of news.
The strategy behind it bears thinking about, because I don’t think this is the action of a company that’s upset with Symbian. The answer may lie in one of Symbian’s fundamental problems – the US market just doesn’t get Symbian OS. The idea of getting a beach-head in the US mobile market with some high end UIQ devices (either by Sony Ericsson or Motorola), in small numbers, has already cropped up here on Mobile Messaging 2.0.
This could very well be an extension of the idea. If the consumer isn’t particularly focused on a specific operating system on their phone, then let’s establish the beach-head with the Sony Ericsson name, rather than with our Operating System prowess.
I’d expect to see the handset debut in the second half of the year, and the marketing should cast some light on Sony Ericsson’s expectations and positing of the Xperia 1 handset. Of course I could be missing something obvious – have you any thoughts on the Microsoft / Sony Ericsson handset?
