Sony Ericsson have announced the Sony Ericsson W580i, just in time for this year’s CTIA trade show. And about time, too! Sony Ericsson have been a bit too quiet at the past few shows, so it’s nice to see them finally releasing a new phone.

Unfortunately, despite looking great, being a Walkman phone, and exuding “ice-cool, understated” urban style (their words, not mine!), the W580i is yet another Walkman phone. A slider this time, but nothing that really stands out.

Which makes me wonder – is Sony Ericsson in decline?

Read on to find out why Sony Ericsson might be losing the mobile phone wars.

Sony Ericsson’s worrying inactivity

Before I begin, I’m not down on Sony Ericsson phones. I own one, and I love the way their technology actually works. While other mobile phone manufacturers may release phones with more megapixels, they never beat the quality of Sony Ericsson’s camera phones.

The same with the company’s Walkman phones. Every other company has a music phone, but none quite measure up to the quality of a Walkman phone.

So I like Sony Ericsson. Great products, great brand. I’m just concerned that there’s nothing new coming from them, and hasn’t been for a while now.

Granted, top-end phones such as Nokia’s N-Series are not the bread and butter of a mobile phone company, and they all have to make entry-level and medium-level phones in order to afford the R&D costs of the top-end super-phones.

But Sony Ericsson haven’t released a technologically-superior phone for many months, letting Nokia and Samsung in particular, walk away with the technological honours.

Sony Ericsson’s most recent top-end phones are the W880i (the smaller picture, top) and the forthcoming K850i (the blurry picture, above), but although good looking phones, they hardly set the world on fire.

Is Sony Ericsson doing a Motorola?

What’s worrying me is what this will eventually do to people’s perception of Sony Ericsson.

Motorola ruled the mobile phone roost for a while in terms of the success of its RAZR, but killed its own golden goose by churning out hundreds of variants of the RAZR in different colours, but without any innovation. The company then had to play catch up (and still does) as its competitors’ phones made the RAZR look like the antiquated dinosaur it still is.

Granted the RAZR still sells, but for a much reduced price (and therefore profit), and the failure to find a successor has led to Motorola posting a loss for the first half of 2007, forcing CEO Ed Zander to announce “performance in our mobile phone business continues to be unacceptable and we are committed to restoring its profitability.” Such is the price of complacency in a ferociously competitive market.

Now, I’m not suggesting that Sony Ericsson are in the same boat as Motorola. Rather than relying on one phone, Sony Ericsson relies on two ranges of phone (the Walkman and CyberShot), each with several different models. Its eggs aren’t quite all in the same basket as Motorola’s were.

How Sony Ericsson is getting left behind

However, the company can no longer rely on the quality of its products as being the differentiating factor between its own phones and those of its competitors’. Nokia’s N-Series is now streets ahead of anything Sony Ericsson produces (certainly, Sony Ericsson has nothing to match the Nokia N95), while Samsung’s new Ultra range has shown that the Korean firm is not only capable of offering hi-tech phones with a thousand gadgets tacked on, those gadgets actually work. Not only that, it can also do great design and generate a lot of interest as well, which is more than Sony Ericsson are doing at the moment.

And I haven’t even mentioned the iPhone!

Sony Ericsson, therefore, is in danger of doing a Motorola, relying on the success of its existing brands, and letting the other mobile phone manufacturers leave it for dust. Which is not only worrying, it’s upsetting too, as I love Sony Ericsson phones!

Taking the mobile pulse of the blogosphere

But think about the phones that have set the fan-boys and the blogosphere on fire this year:

• Samsung’s Ultra range, each of which is the world’s slimmest phone in some form or another, while its Ultra Smart F700 smartphone is just about the most eagerly-awaited smartphone of the year
• LG’s success with its designer phones, the latest of which, the LG Prada phone, is both beautiful to look and highly sophisticated, with its iPhone-esque touchscreen. Plus, there are rumours of LG releasing a similar model with HSPDA and Wi-Fi added to it.
• Nokia, with its Nokia N95 Sat-Nav phone blowing the entire competition away in terms of its features. And it’s tiny, too, being no bigger than a Nokia N80, apart from its screen, which is huge!
• Motorola…well, I’m sure they’ll be bringing out a paisley-coloured RAZR later this year, as they’ve used up all other hues and colours in previous RAZR variants!.

…and Sony Ericsson? Well, there was the W880i Walkman phone, which, although it looks fantastic, is simply a better, er, Walkman phone; and the K850i CyberShot phone, which again, is just a high megapixel camera phone. Minimal buzz.

And no wonder. Nokia release a 5 megapixel camera phone, and throw in Wi-Fi, HSPDA, full GPS Sat-Nav functionality and a tonne of other features. Sony Ericsson just release a 5 megapixel camera phone.

Which phones have the most buzz?

To demonstrate my point, I checked out which phone manufacturers have been generating the most buzz in the past 6 months using BlogPulse’s Trend Tool. As you can see (below), Sony Ericsson is trailing every other manufacturer including Motorola, which, given its recent dismal performance, is not exactly a good sign.

The same with the phones themselves. Comparing Sony Ericsson’s latest releases, the W880i and K850i, with the LG Prada phone, Samsung’s Ultra phones and the Nokia N95, Sony Ericsson is left for dust (below).

Is Sony Ericsson beaten?

Sony Ericsson is not, of course, in the same predicament that Motorola is in, and is currently enjoying healthy profits, with its Walkman phones being particularly successful. But you can’t stand still in the world of mobile phones, as Motorola so ably proved, and just like Motorola, Sony Ericsson is in danger of being a one-trick pony, overly-reliant on the success of one type of phone.

With no buzz, no hype, little presence at the recent mobile phone and consumer electronics trade shows and precious few innovative new phones on the horizon, you can’t help but feel that Sony Ericsson is in danger of losing the phone wars.

I hope I’m wrong. CTIA starts tomorrow, and they might shock us all with a stunning new announcement. But it’s been quite a while since I got excited about a Sony Ericsson phone, and if the blogosphere’s anything to go by, I’m not the only one.

[Source: BlogPulse, The Register]