courtesy slash gear

Sony Ericsson Entertainment Unlimited Phones Aino and Satio get firmware upgrades making them less buggy and more effiicient and user-friendly. As we know, the two phones were going headlong down all thanks to Aino’s buggy touchscreen and Satio’s irredeemable software bugs.

Sony Ericsson, in a bid to save the phones from swooshing down the alleys, has gone a step further and upgraded the firmwares. The new firmware for Aino™, version – R7AA071 is already available for updating in SEUS.

Satio too, gets an update.

Comverse just announced that it will assist propreitors Sony Ericsson in the manufacture of visual voicemail on its handsets for residential and business users.

“Because of visual voicemail’s global appeal, it has become a high priority to make the service available on new handsets,” said Chief Marketing Officer John Bunyan at Comverse, the world’s leading supplier of software and systems enabling value-added messaging and content services, converged billing and active customer management, and IP communications.

“Our strategic cooperation with handset leaders like Sony Ericsson,” Bunyan said, “helps ensure that new handsets can offer the most attractive and user-friendly visual voicemail experience to the broadest number of people.”

There’s no denying that the PSP Go, Sony’s newest portable gaming console, looks a lot like a touchscreen smartphone (think Blackberry Storm) when it is closed.

It makes us wonder what it would take from the Japanese consumer electronics giant to offer one version that comes with the features you’d expect to find on an iPhone and more.

Company reveals mobile phone components are already being used in medical equipment, consumer goods and childrens’ toys.

Yari will be the first one

Japanese-Swedish phone maker Sony Ericsson will pack its future handsets with the Flexion technology from Accumulate UK, according to a global licensing deal the two companies signed and announced recently. According to Accumulate UK, Sony Ericsson becomes this way the first handset vendor around the world to include mobile games with Flexion on new mobile phones, based on the success Hutchison 3G UK has had.

As many of you might already know, it was only recently that mobile phones started to come to the market with pre-loaded games. Games are now seen as a necessary component of any mobile phone, yet they were only considered a means of cheering oneself up before. Full versions of games were present on handsets previously only after phone makers paid publishers license fees for them.

However, Accumulate UK’s Flexion technology is meant to transform the costs handset makers register for having full game versions pre-loaded on their devices into a revenue stream. What it is meant to do is to make users curious about the content on their devices and allow them to try out games before they purchase them, while also offering them ‘rent for the day’ or ‘have-a-go for 25p’ options, the company states.

“We are delighted that Sony Ericsson has taken this step together with us. We have been preloading Flexion enabled games with operators for a while now with very good results. With the help of Sony Ericsson we will extend our reach significantly,” Accumulate’s MD Jens Lauritzson commented on the agreement between the two companies.

The Flexion technology has been also designed so as to promote games similar to the ones pre-loaded on the handset, something that should end up in new trials and sales. According to Accumulate, this move is called ‘on-device retailing.’ The technology is to be included first on Sony Ericsson’s Yari device, due for release before the end of the year.

Sony Ericsson is increasing its efforts to get a larger slice of the mobile phone accessories market in SA.

According to Colin Williamson, marketing manager for Sony Ericsson SA, the company has made its accessories offerings in the local market more of a priority for the future. It recently gathered a number of resellers to introduce its latest accessories, in an effort to increase consumer sales.

Williamson says the company is working hard at upping its accessories game and getting more dealers and resellers involved, which includes keeping them informed of its latest technologies.

Sonja Shear, head of marketing at Sony Ericsson SA, says: “We have had challenges selling accessories through third parties and the channel, and we did not focus on distributors in the past, but things are changing now.”

The company has also started bundling speakers with phones, especially the company’s Walkman range of handsets, to boost accessory sales.

Sony Ericsson accessories were rather absent from dealers’ shelves in the past, and mostly only available from the Sony Ericsson store at Vodaworld in Midrand.

Shear says adding accessories to phones presents dealers with an up-sell opportunity, and believes dealers will take favourably to this opportunity. It will create an environment where they can give consumers a kind of ’supersize me’ option when buying Sony Ericsson phones, she adds.

The company recently underwent a major rebranding exercise to move closer to the Sony brand and to target the emotional aspect of consumers’ lives, more than simply appealing to their communication needs.

This, says Shear, will add to the company’s marketing strategy of ‘entertainment unlimited’, providing a complete mobile multimedia experience to users.

Apart from accessory sales, which Shear and Williamson concede were not a priority before, Shear says the past year’s sales of handsets locally were relatively stable for the company; SA remains one of the top performers in its region.

We’ve seen some blurry shots of the upcoming Sony Ericsson XPERIA X2, and now we are treated to a blurry shot of an inventory screen which shows something that has been missing with the Sony Ericsson XPERIA X2, the release date.

The guys over at wmexperts managed to get hold of the Vodafone inventory listing and it shows that the Sony Ericsson XPERIA X2 has been set for release on the 6th of November.

There isn’t much more to go on the shot, and we still have no word on the Vodafone Sony Ericsson XPERIA X2 price or plans, but no doubt that info will come soon.

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Lets see if Sony Ericsson had had a change over in profit this time, Stay tuned to se-lifestyle

Oooo its got the satio