A negative about joint ventures and mergers is that there’s often a conflict of interest between the parties. The Symbian foundation, for example, is made up of many companies that also work on competing operating systems – Samsung and HP even make their own proprietary mobile OS’s. So what happens when Sony Ericsson, a child of consumer giant Sony and telecommunications giant Ericsson, decides to make a phone running Windows Phone 7 (WP7)? You might think “Sony already makes Windows computers – big deal?” Well it is a big deal, because unlike WP7, no major Windows features directly compete with Sony.
In case you haven’t caught on, the competing feature is Xbox Live. The fact is that Xbox Live has been outdoing Sony’s PSN for some time, even though PSN has been completely free (until recently). Sony’s talked about bringing PSN to Android 3.0, which might work – but it’s very likely that it’d be exclusive to Sony Ericsson phones. Yesterday, WMPoweruser.com reported that Sony Ericsson plans to bring out a WP7 device, and that it’s on their current roadmap (and that Symbian isn’t). The device will probably end up under the Experia brand – which of course started with a Windows Mobile 6.1 device – and according to earlier rumors, may be very similar to the X10 and feature a QWERTY keyboard.
One has to wonder what’s happening within Sony Ericsson. Surely Sony, a company that actively competes with the Xbox, can’t like the idea of a Sony branded device running Xbox Live. This phone could do damage to the PlayStation brand, especially if the mainstream press finds the idea as strange as the online community. From a business standpoint, this phone should never see the light of day, yet some are speculating that Sony Ericsson may release a WP7 phone before they release their Android-based PlayStation-phone.
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