Sony and Ericsson celebrate a ten year partnership

Sony & Ericsson became business partners in 2001, and today celebrate 10 years of union. The partnership has brought forth a host of mobile phones and Which? has rounded them up to take a look at the highs and the lows.

The Sony Ericsson partnership has produced handsets in a number of interesting form factors, such as clam-shell, swivel and PDA. But while the manufacturer enjoyed heady days with the likes of its Cyber-shot camera phones and Walkman music phones, it has lost ground since the advent of the smartphone.

Early Sony Ericsson smartphones ran Windows Mobile and Symbian operating systems, but it seems that Android has recently become not only Sony Ericsson’s  smartphone OS of choice, but the world’s mobile OS of choice.

Which? Best Buys

Over the years Sony Ericsson has racked up a number of Which? Best Buys, with recent winners of the accolade being the Xperia Arc and the Xperia Play.

We were also impressed by the Best Buy Sony Ericsson Satio in 2009. But while our test model worked perfectly, a number of members  told us that they experienced software problems with the phone and Phones4U and Carphone Warehouse discontinued the handset.

Further member satisfaction reports suggest that Sony Ericsson has recently lost favour with even more of our members. While the brand continues to recieve five stars in our reliability survey, it has dropped from a 64% satisfaction rating in 2010 to a 57% rating this year.

Sony Ericsson successes

Sony Ericsson’s best-selling mobile phone to date is the K750 that launched in 2005, however one of the most profitable years for the company was 2007, when over 100 million handsets were sold.

As with it Cyber-shot and Walkman days, Sony Ericsson has begun to borrow and adapt technology from Sony products and introduce it to its mobiles. We now see graphics-improving Bravia engines and Exmor R image sensors for improved low light photography on a number of Sony Ericsson phones – technology similar to that found on Sony TVs and cameras.

Happy tenth anniversary

The mobile phone market has changed significantly in the last ten years. The arrival of the original Apple iPhone in 2007 was a cornerstone and now, just four years later, 35% of the adult UK population owns a smartphone.

With Nokia losing ground, it seems to be Samsung and HTC reacting most nimbly to Apple’s smartphone handset domination. Sony Ericsson will have to fight hard over the next ten years in order to match its past ten years of success.

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