At the Symbian Smartphone Show back in October 2005, the P990 was proudly shown off – the ultimate smartphone which would be all things to all people. Or so it seemed. As of now, the end of 3GSM 2006, the marketing of the SE UIQ phones is starting to become clear. Where the previous Pxxx machines have been sold and aimed is at (let’s be honest) the techno-geeks who examine a feature list a mile long and choose the device that provides the highest spec.
That’s not what sells mass market phones. What sells phones in huge numbers is style, massive network backing, curves, and the three simple bullet points that are listed next to the phone in your Mobile Phone Store on the high street. With UIQ3, SE have sat down and worked on phones that will carry the best three bullet points in the world.
The M600i is being pitched as a messaging device, so assume "Push email" "Qwerty keyboard" and possibly "Handwriting recognition." Look for the W950i Walkman phone (apart from carrying that brand on every leaflet and shop display) to boast "4Gig of memory," "4000 song capacity" and "with Mega Bass" in the stores. If either of those is what you are looking for, you don’t need to know that you’ve got Opera onboard. Or that this is the latest point build of a stable OS. Or any of the other things that we pored over when the P990 appeared.
With UIQ3, Sony Ericsson is clearly out of its forming stage of management, and is set to get storming and push those units out. Yes we can see that they’re hugely multi-functional, and they can do roughly the same as the next UIQ phone, but the man in the street with the money doesn’t care. If he wants a music phone, he gets a clear message now. Get the W950i.
The one thing that a number of us screamed about on seeing these new phones was the lack of a digital camera. I think in part this is because the P990 is shipping with an impressive camera suite, a two megapixel camera, and it was something the PR people were keen to stress. There was also the assumption that SE would continue to be a ‘shotgun’ phone aiming at all the targets, rather than a ‘sniper’ zeroing in on a specific market.
Looks like the snipers have won out. And that means that a careful look at the range shows a rather large gap that we here at AAS expect to be plugged with a phone due for release in Q3 2005.
Quite simply, there needs to be a mass market UIQ smartphone with a high quality camera, geared specifically for photography.
It makes sense. Neither the M600i nor the W950i carry even a basic VGA camera. SE are saying that this would ‘add to the bulk’ of the unit, and that may be true, but it doesn’t change the fact that they were deliberately designed without a camera module, so it’s no wonder there isn’t space. Speculation can start now on what the specs will be, but I’d expect to walk into a store and see "Three Megapixel camera," High resolution screen" and "Built in photo editing suite" or similar software (think red-eye reduction or re-touching photos on the move).
I’d even go so far as to see the phone labelled as a Sony Ericsson CyberShot to take advantage of yet another leading brand name, this time in the digital camera marketplace.
They spaced the announcements of the M600i and the W950i to get as much press coverage as possible. Why launch all three at once when you can get three bites of the cherry? After all, they are going to be marketing these phones separately, even if 95% of the features are identical.
So I’ll watch the inbox for an invitation to a ‘mystery’ Sony Ericsson event in the next few weeks…