Sony launches wafer-thin W880 & W610 Walkman phones

Sony Ericsson on Tuesday unveiled a range of new phones, including a long anticipated new Walkman music phone- its slimmest handset yet, aimed at helping the company to take on bigger rivals in fight for emerging and developed markets, and boost its market share.

Sony Ericsson, the fourth largest mobile phone manufacturer in the world after Nokia, Motorola and Samsung, introduced eight new mobile phones yesterday. The Hammersmith, London-based company informed that out of eight new phones four would be at the low end of the price scale and four higher-priced models.

Already renowned for its high-end line of phones, including the music-playing Walkman, as well as its camera phones, Sony Ericsson said of higher-priced models two would be new Walkman music phones, the W880 and the W610, and two Cybershot digital camera phones, the K810 and the K550.

Sony Ericsson is a joint venture between the Japanese consumer electronics company Sony Corporation and the Swedish telecommunications company Ericsson established in 2001 to make mobile phones, has a full product portfolio covering all target groups.

After establishing the joint venture, the Stockholm-based LM Ericsson and Japan's Sony Corp. have ceased making their own mobile phones.

The W880, at 9.4-mm thick, is the company's thinnest phone, and can store as many as 900 songs on a 1-gigabyte memory stick and sport a 2-megapixel camera. The phone is equipped with software for downloading music from a PC. It comes in a stainless-steel finish and in two stand-out colors- Steel Silver or Flame Black.

The W880 is a UMTS 2100 GPRS 900/1800/1900 music phone which offers up to 20 hours of music playing and 6-1/2 hours of talk. The new Walkman phone will be available in selected markets from Q1 2007.

The W610 is less expensive but is a fully specified music phone. The candy bar-style phone can store as many as 470 songs on a 512-megabyte memory stick. It has a 2.0 megapixel camera with auto focus, video recording and playback. It also features TrackID, which lets the user record a portion of a song and identifies it by name, artist and album.

The W610 is an EDGE 850/900/1800/1900 music camera phone, and includes up to seven hours of talk and 25 hours of music time. The phone is expected to hit the markets in the second quarter of 2007.

Among the newly launched products are the low-cost, easy-to-use handsets, which Sony Ericsson calls "candy bar" phones. The low-end phones come with color screens and two of which have a basic digital camera.

The K200 phone has a camera and a central navigation key to give one-click access to key features. The K220, another camera phone, has an integrated FM radio, which can store up to 10 stations.

The J110 and J120 phones, which lack a camera and some other features found in higher-end phones, still offer large legible keys, a central navigation key, and one-click access to commonly used feature. The J120 will only be sold in black, while the J110 will be available in three colors that is cream, gray, and purple.

The low-end series will be available in the second quarter of 2007.

Although the prices for the newly launched phone range were not disclosed by the company, but Sony Ericsson's head of Nordic operations, Johan Mathson, said he expects the four basic phones to sell somewhere between €50 ($84) and €100, well above Motorola models priced as low as US $30 ($39) and US$40.

Meanwhile, Ben Duffy, European head of marketing said Sony Ericsson would not go as low as US $40 at the launch.