Sony Ericsson

Sony Ericsson is a joint venture established in 2001 by the Japanese consumer electronics company Sony Corporation and the Swedish telecommunications company Ericsson to make mobile phones. The stated reason for this venture is to combine Sony's consumer electronics expertise with Ericsson's technological leadership in the communications sector. Both companies have stopped making their own mobile phones.
The company's global management is based in Hammersmith, London, and it has research & development teams in Sweden, Japan, China, Canada, the Netherlands, the United States, India and the United Kingdom.
Sony Ericsson has approximately 8,000 employees worldwide. With a 43% annual growth rate, it became the fastest-growing mobile vendor in Q3 2006 compared to Motorola with a rate of 39%. In 2007, Sony Ericsson had surpassed Nokia to become the most profitable mobilephone maker in terms of net profit rate, and behind Nokia in gross profit. It had been achieved by her marketshare growth in high end handset market.[citation needed]
The company's current President is as of November 1st Hideki Komiyama, who will be replacing Miles Flint, and the Corporate Executive Vice President is Anders Runevad.

History
Ericsson, which had been in the cellular phone market for decades, decided to divest this business in 2001 following huge losses. Ericsson had decided to source on chips for its phones from a single source, a Philips facility in New Mexico. In March 2000 a fire at the Philips factory contaminated the sterile facility. Philips assured Ericsson and Nokia (the other major customer of the facility) that production would be delayed by less than a week. When it became clear that production would actually be compromised for months, Ericsson was faced with a serious shortage. Nokia had already begun to obtain parts from alternative sources, but Ericsson's position was much worse as both production of current models and the launch of new ones was held up.
Sony Ericsson is the global title sponsor of the Women's Tennis Association (WTA), and works with the Association to promote the Tour in over 80 cities.
Sony Ericsson acquired UIQ Technology, a Swedish software company from Symbian Ltd. in February, 2007. UIQ will remain an independent company, Miles Flint announced.
On October 15 2007, Sony Ericsson announced on Symbian Smartphone Show that they will be selling half of its UIQ share to Motorola thus making UIQ technology owned by two large mobile phone companies.

Types of phones

Sony Ericsson currently concentrates on the categories of: music, camera, business (web and email), design, all-rounder, and budget focused phones. Its three largest categories are:
The Walkman-branded W series music phones, launched in 2005.
The Sony Ericsson W-series music phones are notable for being the first music-centric series mobile phones, prompting a whole new market for portable music that was developing at the time. Sony Ericsson’s Walkman phones have previously been commercially endorsed by pop star Christina Aguilera across Europe.
The Cyber-Shot-branded line of phones, launched in 2006.
This range of phones are focused on the quality of the camera included with the phone. Cyber-shot phones always include a flash, some with a xenon flash, and also include auto-focus cameras. Sony Ericsson kicked off its global marketing campaign for Cyber-shot phone with the launch of ‘Never Miss a Shot’. The campaign featured top female tennis players Ana Ivanović and Daniela Hantuchova. On feb 10 2008, the series has been expanded with the announcement of C702 and C902 phones.
The UIQ smartphone range of mobiles, introduced with the P series in 2003 with the introduction of P800.
They are notable for their touchscreens, QWERTY keypads (on most models), and use of the UIQ interface Platform from Symbian OS. This has since expanded into the M series W series and G series phones.
A new Windows Mobile based product line was introduced by Sony Ericsson during the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona which heralded the advent of the XPERIA series. the first XPERIA phone was the Sony Ericsson X1.
Sony Ericsson uses a number of Sony brand names, such as Walkman and Cyber-shot, to promote the area of focus of individual products. In Japan there have been a number of mobiles with BRAVIA branded screens to indicate a mobile television focus.

Naming convention
Sony Ericsson has used three methods of naming their mobile products:
The most common format uses a total of five (or six) characters, eg. K750i.
This format begins with a capital letter to denote the series of the phone (K750i). This is then followed by three numbers (K750i). The first number indicates the sub-series of the phone, the second indicates the amount of progression from the previous release, i.e. K700i to K750i, and the third number is always either a '0' or '8' and the letter '8' is used either to show a variation of the phone destined for a different market without a feature, eg. the W888 is a W880i without 3G, or it is used to separate phones which have identical specifications but the designs are different, eg. K610i and the K618i. Finally, the lowercase letter at the end of the model name describes the market for which a product is intended; these are: a for the Americas, c for China, and i stands for an international version; there is also an 'im' suffix used for branding iMode phones. Often the last letter is left out to describe the phone generically with no region specific branding.
A newer format (which has only been used on one phone to date) uses a total of three characters, eg. P1i. It is believed that this format is intended for naming flagship models of each phone series due to the limited numbering combinations.
It begins with a capital letter to denote the series of the phone (P1i). The number is used to indicate the amount of progression from the previous release (P1i) and the final lowercase letter, as explained above, describes the market for which a product is intended. Again, often the last letter is left out to describe the phone generically with no region specific branding.
The oldest naming format uses a total of four characters, eg. T68i. This format continued from the naming scheme of the Ericsson mobile business and was only ever used once.
This format begins with a capital letter to denote the series of the phone (T68i). The first number indicates the sub-series of the phone (T68i) and the second letter indicates the amount of progression from the previous release. The last lowercase letter indicates that it is an update of the previous model, i.e. T68 to T68i.
Another peculiar naming format was the one used in naming the Z1010; this format has not been used since the Z1010.
Furthermore, Sony Ericsson always give their phones codenames when developing. Mainly to keep the information secret and to prevent leaks. All codenames are girl names, and some have been taken from the female players of the Sony Ericsson-sponsored tennis tournament,

Financial information
Sony Ericsson posted its first profit in the second half of 2003. Since then, the sales figures from phones have been:
2004: 42 million units
2005: 50 million units
2006: 74 million units
2007: 103.4 million units
Also, Sony Ericsson sold 60m music enabled phones in 2006, including 17m Walkman devices, underlining how its products are more popular than Apple's iPod. Apple sold 39m iPods in its 2006 fiscal year, which ended on September 30. According to the Swedish Magazine M3s issue 7/2006 Sony Ericsson is the best-selling phone brand in the Nordic countries, followed by Nokia.
According to the IT research firm Gartner, in the third quarter of 2006, Sony Ericsson was the fourth largest mobile phone manufacturer in the world after Nokia, Motorola and Samsung. It held a 9% global market share.

Compatibility
During the E3 Media and Business Summit, Phil Harrison, Sony CEO showcased a Sony Ericsson phone using the PlayStation's XMB. A select group of phones are also said to integrate into PlayStation Home (final product)
During the announcement of Sony Ericsson K850,W960 and W910. Some review sites have shown that those mentioned phones sports a new media manager to replace the standard Sony Ericsson File Manager which posses a UI that resembles the XMB interface found on Sony PS3 and PSP products. The mobile developer site confirmed from their spec sheets and whitepapers that the XMB media manager is standard to the phones running Java Platform 8 also known as A200 Platform.