Posts filed under News

During a day in which Sony Ericsson released worst than expected figures for 2008, Sony haven’t exactly helped matters by allegedly refusing to allow Sony Ericsson to put the sacred PlayStation brand on a new range of gaming phones.

Rumours involving Sony’s snub have being circulating for sometime, but apparently Sony Ericsson made a formal proposal to the Sony board in December for access to the PlayStation brand that was categorically refused. Since then, relations between the two companies have become increasingly strained, leading some to wonder whether Sony is preparing to walk away from the partnership.

The announcement by Sony Ericsson of losses reaching EUR 129 million for the last quarter of 2008 (or a loss of EUR 262 million if you include restructuring costs) has only added fuel to the fire.

2008 has been the year of the smartphone, but we ain’t seen nothing yet! With Android, the iPhone, Symbian, Windows Mobile, and yet more smaller players all fighting amongst each other to be crowned king of the smartphone, we consumers are about to be swamped by a torrent of new devices fighting for our hard earned pennies.

While that sounds good at first glance, dig a bit deeper and you’ll see a problem emerge – four competing and completely non-interoperable operating systems equals four key platforms for software developers to choose from when building their apps.

Unless the developers have large teams and large pockets, they’re going to be forced to choose one or two platforms at most, meaning if you choose a platform that becomes unpopular (Windows Mobile ), then you”ll be out of luck when it comes to buying the fancy app you saw on your friend’s iPhone.

Or worse, you might move from an iPhone to an Android phone, only to find that you have to purchase all the apps you bought for your iPhone all over again, as they won’t work on Android. The nightmare of the fragmented platform looms large, just as it has done for years in the PC market and console market.

What can be done, and who can solve this conundrum? Well, Ericsson, apparently!

Sony Ericsson has just announced it’s joined the Open Handset Alliance and will develop a new mobile phone based on the Google Android operating system. There had been rumours about this for some time, but now it’s official, and 2009 should see the introduction of a new Sony Ericsson Android phone.

Not content with the Nokia N97 that was announced on Tuesday, we hear news that Nokia have even more announcements up their sleeve. The first is a certainty – actually, they’ve already announced it! – the second, is a little more unclear!

The first is something of a shock – it’s the Nokia Home Music system, a dedicated wireless music streamer pitched directly at the Logitech Squeezebox.

Seems Nokia’s going into the music business in a big way, and we can only assume they’re trying to usurp the dominance of Apples iTunes store (and thus sever peoples reliance on the iPhone) with an enhanced version of their Comes With Music music download service.

Either that or Nokia also has 10% time just like Google, and one of their engineers came up with something bloody amazing!

The second announcement rumour comes from Scoble, who has either got his days wrong, or knows something we don’t!

More details after the jump.

Uber-blogger Robert Scoble has got the inside scoop on Nokia’s new phones that will be shown off in just over 7 hours time. Writing on Twitter, he says “What I’ve seen tonight from Nokia has, indeed, not been seen yet on the Internet and was pretty surprising to the bloggers.”

Now if that doesn’t get you all excited, nothing will!

If you thought camera phones were old hat, think again. Samsung has announced that its shifted 10 million 5 megapixel+ camera phones so far this year, and expects to ship 13 million by the year’s end.

Gartner, meanwhile,has forecasted that 110 million 5 megapixel+ camera phones will ship globally next year, ramping up to 330 million by 2011.

Part of this is obviously to do with the fact that a high quality camera phone is desirable in its right, but it’s also due to the decreasing cost of developing such phones. In 2007, for example, 5 megapixel+ camera phones were extremely expensive high-end affairs, with the Nokia N95 leading the way. In 2008, 5 megapixels has reached the high mid-range market, with 8 megapixels becoming the norm for the top-end phones.

Nokia seems to be gearing up to announce something big. It’s running its own developers’ show next week, so the announcement may have something to do with that. All we know at the moment is that a new countdown site has appeared, counting down to a time on Tuesday morning when…well, we’ve no idea what will happen, but Nokia are starting to drive the hype machine, so presumably they’re up to something.

A new handset would be nice, but as its being timed to coincide with their developers conference, it might be something more software-orientated, like a major revision to its Ovi social network/file sharing service.

[Source: EngadgetMobile]

LG are warmly welcoming Christmas with a competition, in which you can win either an LG Secret, an 8 megapixel LG Renoir, or a new LG Cookie. Just go to the promotional Web site at LGHoliday.com, play around with the phones a bit, and then enter the comp by clicking Apply.

I should have a hands-on review of the LG Cookie in the New Year.

When I first saw these pictures, I thought “blimey, now that really is a camera phone.” Actually, what I was really thinking was “is that a phone, or just a camera?!” I then noticed the word “Cyber-Shot” emblazoned on it, and the title “Sony T700″, and I got all excited. A new Sony Ericsson CyberShot phone that’s never been seen before? Better still, a new Sony Cyber-Shot phone, sans Ericsson?

Alas, no, it’s none of these things. It’s another fake Chinese phone, and this one isn’t even sure of what it is either. It’s a camera phone alright, it’s just that it doesn’t quite know how good a camera phone it is.

HTC have revealed that they first engaged in discussions with Google about a new Google phone over five years ago. That, remember, is way before the iPhone, and before anything remotely like a smartphone came into existence. Indeed, back then the RAZR hadn’t even been released, and a 1 megapixel cameraphone was unheard of!

The fact that it’s taken so long to develop the new Android phone shows just how committed Google has been with the new platform, and how forward thinking the company has been with the mobile market. The Android platform is based on a company of the same name that Google bought a couple of years ago, but Google’s discussions with HTC began a couple of years before that.

I’m not sure what’s more impressive – the fact that Google has committed five years of work to their new device, or the fact that both Google and HTC managed to keep under wraps for five years!

[Source: EngadgetMobile]