Sony Ericsson to introduce three new handsets in Taiwan New phones heavily focused on mobile gaming, the industry's 'next big thing,'
2003-09-04 Taiwan News, Staff Reporter / By Marie Feliciano
Handset vendor Sony Ericsson yesterday said it was banking on
feature-rich mobile gaming, cool designs, and diverse applications to
shore up its handset sales in Taiwan's fiercely contested mobile phone
market.
The Japanese-Swedish venture said it expected its three newly launched
consumer-oriented handsets - the Z600, Z200, and the T230 - to be its
top revenue-generators in the last quarter of 2003.
In fact, the mobile phone provider said its fortunes had already been buoyed by T610 sales.
"The T610 is the top-selling model in Taiwan today," said Sony Ericsson
(Taiwan) Senior Manager Silver Huang, showing off his stylish
black-and-orange phone.
Over 10,000 units of the T610 model are being sold in Taiwan every month, Huang said.
Equipped with a built-in camera, the handset has a 65K color display,
extensive picture-sharing options, mobile Internet, and multimedia text
messaging applications. It also has a polyphonic ring tone - the latest
ring tone technology that gives users more authentic tunes - and serves
as an ideal mobile gaming platform, added the executive.
"It supports Java downloads, so you can grab the most compelling gaming packages into your handset," he continued.
The phone also supports Bluetooth wireless connectivity, allowing the
gadget to communicate with other Bluetooth-equipped devices such as
headsets, digital cameras, and notebooks, said Huang.
"Even its body is made from aluminum, not plastic," he said.
The Z600, which will be shipped into Taiwan in October, is the first
clamshell mobile phone with complete imaging and messaging capabilities,
said the official.
The hardware comes with QuickShare technology for imaging, messaging,
and gaming. At a product demonstration yesterday, company officials
showed that by pressing a couple of keys, an image could be taken. Press
six more buttons and you could send the photo to a friend or family
member, Huang added.
The handset, which has exchangeable front and back covers, also boasts
of a second display that shows the following information: Caller ID,
time, and network and battery status. Users could even create their own
ring tones with Music DJ and a four-track music creation tool.
Since operators look at mobile gaming as the "next big thing," the Z600
comes with several embedded games including V-Rally2, a racing game for
game consoles. Users who want a real game console experience could also
get one of Sony's latest game console accessory, Gameboard EGB-10, said
Huang.
The phone also supports the Mophun game engine, a gaming platform that
allows end-users to download rich, real-time interactive games from the
Internet. The engine is also integrated in the Sony Ericsson T300 and
T310.
Another games-oriented phone from Sony Ericsson is the Z200. The handset
supports 40 voices, delivering a sound quality that is ideal for
gaming, said Huang.
Games such as Mini-golf, Alien Scum, and Honey Cave are pre-loaded into
the handset. What makes the gaming experience remarkable is the
force-feedback effect: Hit a virtual tree, and your phone will shake and
vibrate.
Sony Ericsson's entry-level color phone, the T230, is also heavily
focused on mobile gaming. Equipped with sound feedback and vibration for
a realistic gaming experience, the T230 also uses the Mophun gaming
engine and has a five-way navigation key to enhance play.
"You will only convince end users to buy your phones if you are offering them value for money," Huang said.
"The device should be packed with better technology, it should be easy
to use, and it should come with value-added services such as game
downloads."
The executive added that handsets with built-in cameras and color screens are the hottest items these days.
"The migration to color screens is inevitable," said Huang. "Those handsets have also become even more affordable."
He also boasted that Sony Ericsson recently released in Japan a 1.3 million-pixel camera phone, the S505i.
"The GSM camera phones that we have today only have 100,000 pixels. That's okay for multimedia services," he said.
"Our S505i, on the one hand, produces images that are so sharp and vivid that you could print them."
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