In the third quarter of 2009, the smartphone mobile market soared like an eagle. About 290.5 million smartphones were sold in the quarter which is an increase of 5.6% from the year before. Between the five major telecommunications companies, all of them sold more phones in this quarter than the previous quarter. However Motorola slipped into 5th place behind Sony Ericsson this quarter. Samsung and LG broke new sales records this quarter too.
Samsung shipped over 60 million phones this quarter which is the highest they have ever done. Below is the break-down of the numbers provided by our friends over at UnwiredView:
* Nokia – 108.5 million units, 37.3% market share
* Samsung – 60.2 million units, 20.7% market share
* LG – 31.6 million units, 10.9% market share
* Sony Ericsson – 14.1 million units, 4.9% market share
* Motorola – 13.6 million units, 4.7% market share
* Others – 60.1 million units, 21.5% market share
Lego Rock Band is a music video game that is being put together through a partnership between Harmonix Music Systems, MTV Games, EA, and Warner Brothers Interactive Entertainment. This game will be released on the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and the Wii on November 3.
Earlier this week Sony Ericsson announced the launch of the motion-activated MH907 headphones. On September 15, Sony Ericsson said that “the way you listen to music changes forever.” And then earlier this week the company made the announcement of the MH907s. The new headphones uses SensMe technology. The headphones allow you to control music playback and call handling by removing and replacing ear buds. Below is a video commercial that Sony put together for the new headphones.
After the jump is a sample spam e-mail that is sent to millions of e-mail addresses. The spam e-mail mentions that a bank in Nigeria wants your contact information since no one has claimed the rights to the account. Given that millions of spam e-mails that are sent use the country of Nigeria as the basis, the spam e-mails are often used in a punchline. That includes a new Sony commercial.
“You can’t believe everything you read on the Internet. Otherwise I’d be a Nigerian millionaire by now,” stated a faux Sony company spokesman in the commercial embedded above. In response to the commercial, the country of Nigeria demands an apology. The Nigerian government claims that the commercial is harming the reputation and image of the country. (more…)
According to a source from The Wall Street Journal, Sony Corporation is planning to launch 3D LCD TVs by end of year (EOY) 2010. The source is unnamed, but Sony is expected to unveil the product next week at the IFA event in Berlin, Germany. Panasonic has already been working on 3D TVs for some time already. The TV will have 1080p resolution (1920×1080) and will include 3D on the Blu-ray disc formats. Vaio Laptops and the Sony PlayStation 3 will also have 3D compatibility.
This October, Sony is releasing a special type of digital frame encrusted with Swarovski crystals. The DPF-D72N/BQ has a 7″ 16:10 LCD display with WVGA (800×480) resolution. There is a 1GB storage capacity and auto-resizing image capability.
The following memory is supported: Memory Stick PRO, Memory Stick PRO Duo, SD, MMC, Compact Flash, xD-Picture Cards, and SDHC.
There is also an accelerometer, wall mount, JPEG and RAW image support. The cost will be $150. Not bad considering Swarovski is a luxury brand name. Now all you need to do is connect the Swarovski heart beat flash drive to the Sony digital frame and you’re all set.
Amazon.com issued a warning that the Sony PS 3 Slim is having supply shortages. This is why they are limiting the sales of the Slim to one per person. Sony Europe says that they have “trucks and trailers” of the Slim on traveling across the continent overseas. Better luck in September if you want to get a hold of the device.
Sony Corporation has released a new version of the PlayStation 3. The new version is much slimmer than the old which caused the price of the older PS3 to become slimmer.
The buttons on the front of the slim version are physical buttons and have a “click” in to function the device. The hard drive is swappable too. To swap the hard drive, there is a screw at the bottom of the slim console. The Slim PS3 weighs about 4 lbs. less than the “fat” versions and consumes 30W less electricty.
One of the cons of the Sony PS3 Slim version is that there isn’t any backward compatibility with PS2 games.
The 120GB Slim PS3 and the fat 80GB PS3 now both cost $299.99. But now the 160GB PS3 costs $399.99. Not bad compared to their Wii and Xbox competitors.
In the U.S. and Canada there are now about 2,500 movie titles available in Blu-Ray format. For those of you that have a goal to add as many Blu-Ray Discs to your collection as possible, you need a place to store them right?
Sony has a solution. They are selling a new device called the BDP-CX7000ES which can hold up to 400 discs. The BDP-CX7000ES can automatically download software called Gracenote MusicID and VideoID which can download cover art and make navigation simple.
The BDP-CX7000ES player supports 1080p video and 24p support. The Cinema HD upscaler adjusts the image quality at a per pixel level too. Dolby TrueHD, Dolby Digital Plus, DTS-HD, and DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1 channel sound is compatible with the device.
The Party-Shot Automatic Photographer is a mount for Sony cameras to sit on a table and observe smiles and faces. Once a face is recognized and smiles, the mount triggers the camera to take a picture. The camera even tilts and zooms as necessary. Currently the Party-Shot Automatic Photographer only works with the Cybershots TX1 and the WX1. This is a great way to take candid photos. The device costs $150.
Material.net prematurely unveiled the Sony S-Series Walkman series specifications. Two of the new devices that are part of the S-series include the Sony 8GB NWZ-S544 and the Sony 16GB NWZ-S545. The devices feature a 16:9 (320×240, 262k colors) 2.4″ QVGA LCD screen. The device also has built in speakers on the front of the player. The device has a 42 hour audio and 6.5 hour video battery life.
Uploading content to the device utilizes a drag and drop interface in the software. The device is also compatible with iTunes and Windows Media Player. There is also an FM radio player with 30 presents. Formats supported for music include MP3, WMA, and AAAC. Video formats supported include H264/AVC, WMV, and MP4. There is a built in microphone and video recording feature in the S-Series Walkman.
Earlier this week Sony announced the release of two new devices set to compete with the Amazon.com Kindle. The two new e-readers will be priced at $200 and $300. The PRS-300 is known as the Sony Reader Pocket and the PRS-600 is known as the Sony Reader Touch. Both will be available at the end of this month.
The Amazon.com Kindle 2 sells for $300 and the Kindle DX sells for $490, giving Sony a cost advantage. The Sony Pocket will cost $200 and will have a 5″ display. Colors for the Pocket will be available in blue, rose, and silver. The device will be able to hold about 350 eBooks.
The $300 Sony Touch will have a 6″ touch screen display. Sony Touch users will be able to take handwritten notes using a stylus and virtual keyboard. All of the notes can be exported or printed.
One of the cons of both e-readers is that they do not work wirelessly. Sony also plans to reduce the prices of their e-books in order to complete with Amazon and Barnes & Nobles’ e-book store prices. For $10, Sony Touch and Pocket users can buy new releases and bestsellers.
Earlier this week Sony announced a 2TB memory stick. The Memory Stick XC will be in the same form factory for memory sticks. It is highly likely that the 2TB memory stick will be backwards compatible with the rest of the XC series (XC Duo, XC-HG Duo, XC Micro, and XC-HG Micro) using the exFAT file system and PRO series (PRO Duo, PRO-HG Duo, HG Micro, and Micro) using the FAT12/16/32 system.
Sony announced today that they have lost $390.5 million (¥37.1 billion) this quarter. The losses are blamed on consumers cutting back spending on TV and technology. Sony has also blamed currency rates, specifically a stronger Yen that is causing inflation in Japan and cuts away from revenue overseas.
Sony sales dropped 19.2% from a year earlier. This quarter’s sales were $16.8 billion (¥1.60 trillion). Operating loss was $267.77 million (¥25.7 billion). Demand for products such as Bravia TVs, Handycam video camcorders, and cyber-shot digital cameras, and Walkman music players have dropped. There has not been much demand for Sony’s consoles compared to their competitors either.
Sony sold about 1.1 million PlayStation 3 consoles and 1.3 million PlayStation Portables in the quarter. During the same quarter last year, Sony sold 1.6 million PS3 consoles and 3.7 million PSPs.
From a positive standpoint, Sony motion pictures saw a 6.5% increase in quarterly sales. The movie Angels & Demons helped trigger the sales increase.
Sony CEO Howard Stringer said that he expects the company to eliminate 16,000 jobs and cut costs in their 57 factories.
On the Sony Electronics Blog, the company announced that they have surpassed one million books available for download on the Sony Reader Digital Book. ”Our free public domain content offering from Google has now surpassed the 1 million title mark. This, in addition to the thousands and thousands of premium titles, best-sellers and new releases in our store, provides you with the largest, most comprehensive selection of eBooks available.” The books available by Google public domain in EPUB format are optimized for current models of the Sony Reader Digital Book.
