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Sony Ericsson offers UIQ shares, analyst suggests to open source instead

Posted by Luis Camino on Mar 3, 2007 in The company

Symbian UIQ Four months after announcing they were acquiring UIQ, Sony Ericsson invited other phone vendors to become shareholders of the Symbian interface (press release), to ensure a strong alternative to the S60 platform for everybody and to improve its financial position. Software, telecom and IT consultant OVUM questions the need of this and suggests an alternative: opening its source. They point to several different advantages that make it sounds like a good advise, but probably so did the advise of opening to investors. There’s no “best” strategy, and we wish Sony Ericsson the best of luck with theirs. After all, by not open sourcing a tiny bit of code nor even basing it’s strategy on third party applications, we all know what Apple is going to achieve with the iPhone and succesive iPhone nano’s, micro’s, etc. Here are some extracts from the article:

It could be perceived that Sony Ericsson is trying to have its cake and eat it, by wanting the strategic advantage of owning its own smartphone platform but at the same time wanting other phone vendors to subsidise it. (…)

[Open sourcing] UIQ would also benefit from developments made by other phone vendors using the UIQ framework, lowering its operating costs. OEMs could then make use of these developments without sacrificing their own differentiation. A move to open source by UIQ would also put Nokia under pressure to re-evaluate S60 software licences and fees.

Read “UIQ: to open or to open source?”

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Sony Ericsson’s Zane Lowe’s Home Taping DJ contest

Posted by Luis Camino on Nov 27, 2006 in The company|W950

Sony Ericsson Home Taping Sony Ericsson is relying on user-generated content to promote their latest Walkman Phone, the W950i. Participants stand to win a chance perform with British radio DJ Zane Lowe live during his Tour, or a brand new phone.

Created by Iris Experience, the campaign calls for users to upload their own remixes of songs, as well as listen to the work of others, at Zane Lowe’s official website. The site’s users will then vote for the best remix and winner (who created the track) wins the chance to play (remix) with Zane himself on the final night of the Sony Ericsson sponsored event, DJ Zane Lowe’s Home Taping Tour. Runners up wouldn’t go ‘home’ empty handed, either: they’ll get a brand new W950i. What’s almost cooler, ringtones and other contents will be available to the users at the gigs via Bluetooth.

[Via BrandRepublic and Zane Lowe]

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Sony Ericsson VS Nokia, according to Flickr, Quesabesde and ARCchart

Posted by Luis Camino on Nov 24, 2006 in K800/K790|The company

“Nokia shamed by Sony Ericsson in battle for margins” is the title of a report of London-based consultant agency ARCchart in which the differences in philosophy of the eternal enemies Nokia and SE are summarized: while Nokia has veered towards share and shows a strong growth in low-end sales and moderate in high-end, Sony Ericsson has boomed high-end sales while keeping one of the best mid-range portfolios, thanks Ã¢â‚¬â€in my opinionÃ¢â‚¬â€ key points like the interface, power of the music and camera functions, and the appeal of the Walkman and Cybershot brands.

But aside from the cameraphone sales, what’s interesting is to see how many people actually take photos with them and therefore to see which phones give a better “digital camera” experience. The graphic above made with Flickr stats shows a competition among several Sony Ericssons and Nokias as the most used to take serious shots. We see the K750 as the stable king of cameraphones and the K800 rapidly gaining popularity along with the also relatively nwe Nokia N73.

Which brings us to Quesabesde.com’s comparative (in Spanish) of these two contenders to the K750′s throne, focusing on the cameras, of which I translate some interesting conclusions after the jump:

(Old) video of a French Sony Ericsson factory giving birth to P900′s and Z600′s

Posted by Luis Camino on Nov 21, 2006 in P900|The company|Videos

In case you didn’t start youtubing all the Sony Ericsson videos after the last one, here’s one of the coolest we have found:

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Sony Ericsson TV commercial of the day: I SE Music

Posted by Eric Resendiz on Nov 15, 2006 in The company|Videos

You have to love the music, in all Bravia style.

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Sony Ericsson receives all possible awards across Europe

Posted by Luis Camino on Nov 14, 2006 in K750/D750|K800/K790|P990|Press releases|The company|W810|W900

I Love Sony Ericsson The Spanish Television and Press Graphic Reporters Association (accronym banned) has awarded the K800 the distinction of the Best Cameraphone of 2006, as an outstanding product that helps the professional photographer optimize his job.

In the United Kingdom, Sony Ericsson has also been awarded by consumers with the Best Manufacturer Of The Year award, the Best Mobile Phone Of The Year award to the K800 Ã¢â‚¬â€which also was voted the “Readers’ Dream Phone“Ã¢â‚¬â€, and the Best Music Phone award to the W810.

Finally, the German edition of the Connect magazine granted, with readers’s votes, the awards of Best Cameraphone to the K800 (45,2% of the votes, and the apparently-not-so-old K750 being in third place), Best Music Phone to the W810 (with 59,9% of the votes), Best 3G Phone to the W900, and Best PDA Phone to the P990 (hmm…).

To summarize, Sony Ericsson nowadays seems to be losing the “best phone with wheels and facial hair” category only, or whatever. Unstoppable!

[Via Spanish Press Release]

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Live pics and videos from the Sony Ericsson Night Tennis

Posted by Luis Camino on Nov 13, 2006 in Exclusives|Featured|Photos|The company|Videos

The closest to being in Tron. Or in a big, ~~virtual~~ reality videogame. Several matches in the dark with pounding background music for the sake of the players’ confusion Ã¢â‚¬â€who kept it cool and played quite impressivelyÃ¢â‚¬â€, and a fashion show from RubÃƒÂ©n GÃƒÂ³mez Navarro that was… let’s say… “bright”. Standing out was a gigantic screen on one side of the court that showed the score and the players’ names, in a neatly designed animated way. Sony Ericsson style if you will. When the championship finished, the court was to be the dancefloor, and Groove Armada the entertainers (Darren Emerson the previous day) with a great Video Dj performance in the mentioned screen. All in all, even if we didn’s see any single darn phone, Night Tennis is a perfect showcase of Sony Ericsson’s innovative spirit. Only one advice for those who plan to attend to the next show in Miami: non-epileptics only. Follow the link for the videos and some photos taken with the help of a (W800) cameraphone, always better than regular cameras when it comes to capture flashy random lights in the dark.

Sony Ericsson to buy UIQ

Posted by McCoy on Nov 10, 2006 in The company

Symbian UIQ Sony Ericsson, in a surprising movement (at least to me), has decided to acquire the UIQ Technologies division of Symbian. They must have their reasons, but can’t stop thinking one of them surely is the multiple critics that P990 has gotten since its launch. Until now, UIQ couldn’t focus its development in any particular manufacturer, because Symbian is a company owned by multiple cellphone companies, and being so, they must develop a standard product which can be implemented in multiple and very different devices from different brands with minimum modifications software-wise. This approach has its advantages, but it doesn’t come without drawbacks, and one of them is that the interface must work in different kind of terminals, which limits it quite a deal. Having full control over UIQ’s development will enable Sony Ericsson to custom the interface to their likings, making it as good as the one in the rest of the Sony Ericsson terminals.

Another question to pay attention to is whether this could affect UIQ’s popularity between developers. Right now, there are only 3 UIQ 3.0 terminals in the market: the M600, W950 and P990. This is a very low number compared to UIQ 2.x, which was adopted not only by Sony Ericsson, but also by Motorola and BenQ, to name a couple more. The difference translates in the number of UIQ 3.0 users in the market, which is quite lower than UIQ 2.x back at its time. And number of potential users is a very (if not the most) important factor for a software developer, when it comes to decide whether to develop software for that platform or not. And UIQ, without third-party software, doesn’t worth much. Sony Ericsson claims that the rest of the manufacturers will be able to acquire Symbian UIQ licenses just like they have been doing until this moment. The real question is if they will want to do that, once Sony Ericsson decide to adapt UIQ more and more to their devices.

The transaction is expected to be completed over the next few months.

Read about this in the Symbian site

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Sony Ericsson readies insane “Night Tennis” technoparty in Madrid

Posted by Luis Camino on Nov 1, 2006 in Exclusives|Hot|Press releases|The company

They’ve gone nuts: look what Sony Ericsson is preparing during the SE Championship Tour for the nights of November 9th and 10th in Madrid, Spain, as the first in a series around the world: black tennis court illuminated solely with UV light, 8 players wearing neon clothes, a bright ball and background live DJ music from no others than Groove Armada and Darren Emerson, as well as neon-wear catwalk fashion show from Ruben Gomez Navarro, all deep into the night. I’m not exaggerating a bit: in Darren Emerson’s words: “I’ve DJ’d in interesting places and situations and also weird ones, but this is going to be the most amazing of all”.

Free tickets are available to Spanish residents via SMS so if you’re going to be around the capital by next week, check out our spanish post on this topic for more details, or go to Nighttennis.es. No word on what is going to be the next city to welcome another Night of the Dancing Neon Mobile Phone Freak.

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Sony Ericsson re-enters top five smartphone rankings

Posted by McCoy on Oct 31, 2006 in The company

Sony Ericsson is back to the Smartphones Big Guys’ scene, thanks to the P990, M600 and W950. The company has re-entered, after a long absence, at fourth place in the top five smart mobile devices companies in the EMEA market, with a 3% share. This also has had a positive effect on Symbian’s market share in smartphones, which is now at 78.7% (it was 76.6% last year).