Sony Ericsson starts making cheap phones in India
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Mobile phone maker Sony Ericsson said  on Wednesday it would have low-cost color screen and music  playing handsets made in India through manufacturing agreements  with Flextronics  and Foxconn (2038.HK).
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(InfoWorld) - Responding to demand for ultra-thin designs, Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications has announced a new Walkman music phone -- its slimmest handset yet. The product is one of several announced Tuesday ahead of the 3GSM World Congress in Barcelona next week. The W880 packs music features into its 9.4 millimeter-thin mobile phone design: the handset comes preloaded with Walkman Player 2.0, Disc2Phone music management and TrackID music recognition applications. A 1GB Memory Stick Micro (M2) card, capable of storing up to 900 tunes, is included in the box. The handset also features a 1.8-inch QVGA, 262k TFT (thin-film transistors) display, a 2 megapixel camera and the Bluetooth Music Receiver MBR-100 system. This discreet accessory uses short-range wireless technology to stream music from the user's phone directly to a home or car stereo, using the phone as a remote control to alter the volume or skip through tracks. In addition, the phone provides a flight mode for use on airplanes and is equipped with a battery capable of playing music up to 20 hours or offering 6.5 hours of talk time. The W880 music phone is based on the GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) standard and supports both the GPRS (General Packet Radio Service) and 3G (third-generation) technologies. It offers a range of communication services, such as a push e-mail, Web surfing and video streaming. Sony Ericsson will also provide a GSM variant of the Walkman music phone, the W88, without video telephony capability, for the Chinese market. A slightly larger Walkman phone, minus a few features, is the W610. The W880 music phone will be available in selected markets in the first quarter, with the W610 to follow in the second quarter. Prices were not available. Among the other new products is a series of low-end, easy-to-use handsets, which Sony Ericsson calls "candy bar" phones. The K200 phone has a camera and a central navigation key to give one-click access to key features. The K220, another camera phone, has an integrated FM radio, which can store up to 10 stations. The J110 and J120 phones, which lack a camera, offer large legible keys and easy navigation.
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Dual-mode handsets will be able to connect to the company's worldwide Wi-Fi network on the cheap.
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Microsoft on Sunday night unveiled a deal with Sony (NYSE:SNE) Ericsson, which will see the Swedish-Japanese mobile handset maker use Microsoft's Windows Mobile operating system in a new flagship handset to be launched later this year.
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India, already the world&#039;s fastest  growing wireless services market, is set to become a handset  manufacturing and export hub as giants such as Nokia and LG  churn out millions of phones to tap voracious demand.
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The company signs on an Indian cellular provider, looking to capitalize on the country's fast-growing wireless market.
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Sony Ericsson has joined the mobile Internet hardware game by premiering two of its first High Speed Packet Access ExpressCard/34 devices at 3GSM in Barcelona this week.
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Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications AB will launch late Thursday in Berlin six new phones, including a high-end Walkman-branded handset with around 9G bytes of internal Flash memory, according to a company spokeswoman.
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Sony Ericsson unveiled eight phones Tuesday aimed at helping the world's fourth-biggest mobile phone maker boost its market share in emerging and developed markets.
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Sony Ericsson will begin selling its first phone using Windows Mobile software this year, Microsoft was due to announce on Sunday, just ahead of the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.Until now, Sony Ericsson has primarily used the Symbian operating system to power its smart phones. Its Windows Mobile phone will have a touch screen with a slide-out keyboard and a camera, said Brian Arbogast, vice president of mobile services at Microsoft.While Apple&#39;s iPhone has spurred wider interest in touch-screen phones, Sony Ericsson has been selling touch-screen phones for years. It uses the UIQ user interface on its Symbian phones. UIQ competes with Series 60, the user interface Nokia developed to run on its Symbian phones.Sony Ericsson joins HTC, Motorola, Palm, Samsung, and others selling phones that use Windows Mobile.Microsoft said the Sony Ericsson device should be available to end-users this year, and that examples of it will be on display at the conference in Barcelona. Sony Ericsson was not available to offer more details. It has scheduled a conference call Monday to discuss the announcement.&quot;We&#39;re excited about them bringing their entertainment expertise and experience and brand to a device that has all the benefits of Windows Mobile,&quot; Arbogast said.Sony Ericsson will likely continue to sell Symbian phones in addition to the Windows Mobile handset, a common practice among mobile-phone developers. For example, Motorola sells Windows Mobile, Symbian and Linux phones, while Palm sells Windows Mobile phones as well as handsets that use its own operating system.Nokia, the number-one handset maker in the world, does not make Windows Mobile phones, but it uses Linux to power handheld computers, in addition to its wide use of Symbian.The Sony Ericsson phones could help Microsoft further a recent effort to position Windows Mobile phones, which are primarily seen as tools for business users and attractive to consumers. Sony Ericsson makes phones with its Walkman music players and Cybershot cameras, featuring brands that are well-known to consumers.Rumors circulated late last year that the handset maker had begun manufacturing a Windows Mobile phone that would ship in the second half of this year. At the time, Sony Ericsson would not confirm the plans.Windows Mobile is in a distant second place behind Symbian in market share among mobile operating systems. In the fourth quarter 2007, Symbian was used in 65 percent of smart phones sold worldwide, according to recent research from Canalys. Microsoft had 12 percent of phones sold, followed by Research In Motion with 11 percent.The Mobile World Congress, formerly called 3GSM, starts Monday in Barcelona.
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The mobile telephone company,  Vodafone, begins to use its brand name across India.
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International mobile-phone vendors Motorola, Nokia and Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications totaled 48% of the Taiwan handset market in September, holding the top three positions, according to statistics compiled by Taiwan mobile-phone distributors.
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Telecoms giant Ericsson said Friday it had won a 1.3-billion-dollar (951-million-euro) contract to upgrade and expand Indian operator Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd&#39;s (BSNL) mobile network.
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InfoWorld - Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications A.B. is setting up a research and development (R&amp;D) unit for mobile phones in Chennai in south India.
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Mobile phone maker Sony Ericsson said  on Tuesday that it would launch a new service on its phones  that would allow full music downloading, initially focusing on  new and up-and-coming artists.
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Mobile phone software maker Symbian  and phone maker Sony Ericsson said on Monday mobile operators  need to make wireless Internet services cheaper to appeal to  more consumers.
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Giant mobile phone maker Sony Ericsson will launch high-quality digital Walkman mobile phones in March this year to benefit from the surge in the mobile music business, which it expects to be a major growth area in 2005.