Android race heats up, but Sony Ericsson will wait for release 2.0
Published: 27 May, 2009
READ MORE: Ericsson | Sony Ericsson
HTC may still have the upper hand in Android, in the wake of its Chinese deal, but the market is heating up. Sony Ericsson (SEMC) and Motorola are both pinning high hopes on the platform, but both are in danger of leaving their launches rather late to grab the keenest attention. This is especially true of SEMC, which has decided to sit out versions 1.0 and 1.5 of Android and wait for 2.0, just as major rival Samsung shows its greater agility by entering the Android space.
Peter Ang, VP of marketing for SEMC's Asia-Pacific region, told DigiTimes that the company wanted to wait for the next release of Android - expected late this year - because it would have better multimedia support. This, of course, is important to SEMC's positioning, since much of its success has come from music and camera models under its Walkman and Cybershot brands and it plans a major multimedia push with its Entertainment Unlimited and idou launches (though its plan to drop the Sony brands at an early stage in favor of idou will hardly help it to maintain its reputation among media-savvy consumers).
Ang also insisted that SEMC would continue to support Windows Mobile - even though the firm's CEO Hideki Komiyama recently said that the only Windows handset currently in the SEMC stable, the Xperia X1, had been an "experiment", and (he implied) not a very successful one at that. This would make it logical for SEMC to reduce its R&D and marketing costs by focusing just on Android and Symbian.
Komiyama had also hinted that SEMC would not be rushing into the Android market. In April he said in an interview with Reuters: "It does require a lot of evaluation, as well as a lot of testing, a lot of acceptance from a consumer viewpoint, and there is still some time to go."
Other reports from Android land - as well as Acer and Samsung shipping handsets around midyear, Motorola's first Android phone, codenamed Morrison, should debut in time for the holiday buying period, initially with T-Mobile USA. Panasonic of Japan is developing a Google phone, though this will not be released until next year, possibly around the same time as SEMC's. And AT&T plans to launch Android models from HTC (a new design codenamed Lancaster, similar to the Magic but with a 'unique' social interface and due to be exclusive to AT&T for six months. The operator is also reported to be planning to offer a Motorola Android phone codenamed Heron, from early November.
And Canadian firm Koolu has taken the Neo FreeRunner open source handset design from OpenMoko, and is putting Android 1.5 on it, aiming to release a consumer version this summer. Koolu is using the GTA02 version of FreeRunner, which uses only open phone standards, CTO Jon Hall told ZDnet. Its product will be marketed worldwide to small and medium companies and developing economies, in particular. Hall is also executive director of not-for-profit user organization Linux International, which recently took on Intel's Linux netbook platform Moblin.
More ERICSSON News
More SONY ERICSSON News
More HANDSET News
COMMENTS
Carrier Broadband Performance: Africa & Middle East
Carriers are using mobile broadband as their weapon of choice in the fight against the commoditization of voice and falling ARPU. This...
Voice over LTE: Market Analysis and Forecasts
VoLTE offer unique advantages in lowering a carrier's voice infrastructure economics and promises to improve voice quality, device...
Satellite Phones: Will Dual Mode Help the Phoenix Rise from the Ashes?
Satellite phones have followed an arduous path since their much-hyped launch more than a decade ago. The hype was followed by an e...
