Samsung drops Symbian

Following on from the announcement by SonyEricsson that it would not be producing anymore handsets based on Symbian to concentrate on Android, Samsung has also announced it's dropping Symbian and will be developing new handsets based on Android and Windows Phone 7.

This must be a blow for Nokia who are still pushing Symbian and hoping that Symbian^3, now open sourced, would be a competitor to Google's Android and Apple's iOS and to some degree Microsoft's WP7 though earlier version of Windows Mobile haven't been too successful.

Nokia have a confused approach and are utilising MeeGo (their joint Linux venture with Intel combining the best features of Nokia's Maemo and Intel's Moblin) as their smartphone operating system, though Symbian^3 also offers smartphone features (though can also be cut down as a dumb OS for cheaper phones).

Though Nokia are still dominant in the phone arena, selling 1.4m phones per day, it's a costly exercise to keep development teams for MeeGo and Symbian when no-one apart from Nokia is using them and Android is becoming the default OS for smartphones (apart from Apple's iOS which they are unlikely to license to other phone vendors).

Maybe Nokia should drop MeeGo, move to Android and admit Google have won and just develop Symbian as a 'dumb' OS for the non smartphone market.

SonyEricsson Xperia X1

SonyEricsson are holding a launch event in the Truman Buildings in Brick Lane tonight (19/09/08).

It's been delayed for some time, but the wait is now over. Their first Windows Mobile device - which is meant to be highly customisable.

SonyEricsson debut new phones

Yesterday SonyEricsson announced several new phones, including the W960 which is a walkman phone with 8GB of memory. It seems to improve on the W950 as it also has a camera.

The P1 is now also available on the SonyEricsson store which is their P990 replacement (it's actually phone sized rather than brick sized).

SonyEricsson are definately giving Nokia a run for their money and are up there with good styling and functionality.

SonyEricsson contribute to Sony's revenues

SonyEricsson profits have increased by 47% will revenue has increased by over 100%. This is due to their Walkman and Cybershot range of phones.

Sony must welcome the added revenues.