Sony Ericsson, Microsoft to Offer WinMobile Phones

Sony Ericsson, long the purveyor of its bespoke operating system, has teamed up with Microsoft (MSFT) and will start selling Windows Mobile phones sometime later this year, the company announced. Sony Ericsson also own the UIQ, a deriviative of the Symbian OS.

As part of its deal with Microsoft, SE will introduce a new brand, XPERIA, and will launch X1, an arc slider phone that has a 3-inch clear wide VGA display and a full QWERTY keyboard. Microsoft is likely to ship 20 million phones in fiscal year ending June 2008, and now has partnerships with SE, LG (LPL), Motorola (MOT), Samsung and HTC for its Windows Mobile OS. It has been trying to convince Nokia to join the party.

The Mobile OS market is going to go through some major upheaveals in next 24 months or so as Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone, Google’s (GOOG) Android, LiMo and Symbian all jostle for pole position in the high-end phone market.

Comments

[Tom B:]

God, they must be desparate.

2008 Feb 10 07:10 PM

[Etoile Bril...:]

This is very significant from Ebay's point of view. One of the big drawbacks of Skype is the fact that it cannot be run directly on Symbian OS (it can be done rather clumsily through a client such as Fring). Many people would like to have Skype integrated into their cell handset rather than have a separate handset for Skype. Whilst this is by no means the last obstacle to cheap/free mobile calls it is a significant step.

2008 Feb 11 03:38 AM