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.

Weight

- 115.0 gr
- 4.1 oz

In case you are wondering why this phone looks so familiar, then let me tell you that SOny Ericsson Kita is a special version of Sony Ericsson Yari which got its press release a few weeks back.  The transformation from “Yari” to “Kito” is because “Yari” in the Filipino language has a really bad reputation!

And we can conclude that Kita, like Yari (which failed to attract noise) is also a gaming phone with specially dedicated gaming keys!

Kita is expected to be released in September 2009.

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via

special thanks to ShadoW for bringing the news to my notice

SE-LIFESTYLE

Dubbed “Idou” when it was unveiled at the Mobile World Congress expo in Barcelona earlier this year, the Swedish-Japanese giant confirmed last month it would market the device globally as “Satio”.

Satio is believed to be the world’s first 12MP cellular handset, and according to dealers, would hit the UAE market in October. Sony Ericsson has, however, only confirmed “early Q4″ as its release date in the Emirates. Meanwhile, tech websites reported last week that rival Samsung has also announced a 12MP phone dubbed the Samsung M8910 Pixon12.

Weighing around 126gm, the quad band Satio has 3G capabilities and is a full-touchscreen smartphone with a 3.5-inch display and GPS. The first model in a new series of entertainment phones from Sony Ericsson this year, the handset is being marketed as a device capable of providing “unlimited entertainment” including a music player, e-mail and messaging, Bluetooth, PC syncing, USB mass storage and a personal organiser among others, powered by the Symbian operating system.

The handset’s camera is also equipped with powerful features, according to the manufacturers, including face detection, a staggering 16x digital zoom, picture blogging, red-eye reduction and touch capture. Measuring 112x55x13.3mm, it will come with a 128MB on board memory with a microSD memory card support. The Satio will be available in the UAE and other key markets in three colours: black, silver and bordeaux.

Dealers in the UAE would not, however, specify the expected price of the phone, saying it could range between Dh2,000 and Dh4,000. The Satio is one of three new high-end touchphones to be launched by Sony Ericsson in the next few months – the other two being the Aino, which lets users remotely access their PlayStations, and the Yari, which features gesture gaming.

“Imagine a phone with a 12.1MP camera. It is the world’s first and I am sure most people would covet this handset,” says Musbah Alhmoud, a self-confessed Sony Ericsson loyalist.

“But it is not just the camera. The phone is equipped with massive entertainment capabilities and other features, including for business.”

Mobile phone dealers in the capital say the Satio would give a strong push to Sony Ericsson’s campaign to defend its market share in the UAE and other countries, noting that the company has stepped up its promotion drive in the past two years with a barrage of sophisticated handsets and increased promotional campaigns and celebrity endorsements.

“Sony Ericsson spends more than all other mobile phone makers on promotion campaigns in the Middle East,” says Abdul Monem Al Hariri, sales manager at Golden Crown, one of the largest mobile phone dealers in the capital.

“I think the company might be feeling the pinch of growing competition here and worldwide and wants to defend its share.

I feel that what they are spending is paying off as the company is now trailing the market leader Nokia of Finland.

“Of every 10 mobiles, we sell six Nokias and three Sony Ericssons,” he adds.

Sony Ericsson was among the top three mobile phone makers a few years ago and its market share had steadily grown before it began to slip with the entry of many new manufacturers, mostly from China and the development of advanced handsets by other key mobile phone makers, mainly Nokia and Samsung.

In the first quarter of 2009, Sony Ericsson sold around 14.4 million mobile handsets compared with nearly 22 million phones in the same period last year. The decline depressed its market share to 5.4 from 7.5 per cent, according to figures by tech researcher Gartner.

In contrast, Samsung’s sales increased to 51.3 million handsets from 42.3 million in the same period, boosting its market share to 19.1 from 14.4 per cent and allowing it to maintain its position as the second largest after Nokia.

Despite a sharp fall in Nokia’s sales to 97.3 million handsets from 115.1 million, the Finnish giant retained its top position in the list of mobile phone makers. But its market share slipped to 36.2 from 39.1 per cent.

LG Electronic, the second biggest mobile phone maker in South Korea, is the third largest mobile phone manufacturer in the first quarter of 2009 with a market share of 9.9 per cent. Motorola came fourth with a share of 6.2 per cent.

Yari Previews

Satio Preview

Aino Preview

EnJoy!!!

The Sony Ericsson Yari is a mobile phone in the slide form factor. The phone’s dimensions and weight are: 100×48×15.7 mm and 115 g. The device is designed to operate on the following networks: GSM 850/1800/1900 MHz. The phone has a 5.0 MP camera, microSD, GPRS Class 10 (4+1/3+2 slots), HSCSD, EDGE Class 10, Bluetooth v2.0 + A2DP, USB v2.0, WAP 2.0/xHTML, T9.

Sony Ericsson Yari

[View with PicLens]

Features of Yari

Pics via eprice

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Testing Out the Yari Phone by Sony Ericsson.

Sony Ericsson Satio example video from Mobiwoo on Vimeo.

Hey Guys? Remember the officials said that we may expect that a new playstation phone will be released probably late december?? Christmas time, in particular?.. Looking at the fact that so far only recently released Sony Ericsson Aino is the playstation replacement with its mighty gaming functions, it seems that this phone will see light in late december.. that tallies with the fact that it wont be out before October!

BUT.. yea here’s a BIG BUT! Our Partner in Crime, se-blogger, claims that it shall be launched on 28th September, 2009!!

Amazing, aint it? .. Alongwith it, its been claimed Satio and Yari too will see your eager faces at the markets

What say?

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The interactive home screen and synchronises itself with the gaming carousel(start it via applications) and runs in the background.

And when we day runs in the background, we mean it, as the little gaming icons sit happily in the faded distance on the home screen, ready to pop back up to life whenever you need them.

And the connectivity is what Sony Ericsson hopes will make the difference with the Yari, as the idea is you can easily scroll up and down the different gaming types as well as check out what games are proving popular downloads on an easily accessible chart.

This phone is actually quite confusing to hold in the hand. It feels quite light and almost plasticky, but weirdly not in a bad way, and also the range of functions on hand felt plentiful.

Knocking the pleasant-to-touch navigation wheel upwards started the music player, left and right were messaging and Bluetooth, with down activating the contacts (although these are customisable) and the whole think slid up and down with a nice action.

Via

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