Source : AP 

Sony Ericsson on Sunday announced a new premium handset aimed at capturing the web convergence market, blending multimedia with mobile web communication in its first product using Microsoft Corp’s operating system.

The Xperia X1 will launch in the second half of 2008 and will be sold worldwide, including in the United States.

This is the first time the company is using Microsoft Windows Mobile in a departure from its collaboration with Symbian, an open operating system partly owned by Sony Ericsson.

Executives said their focus was on the user experience, not the operating system, and said that many Sony Ericsson signature features, including a patented nine-panel interface, had been built on top of the Windows operating system.

Sony Ericsson executive Steve Walker said Microsoft Mobile was the “ideal” platform for the X1.

“In the case of the X1, Microsoft gives us an opportunity to build on,” Walker said. But he said that did not necessarily mean that subsequent handsets in the Xperia sub-brand would be based on Microsoft.

The handset features an arc sliding mechanism with a 3-inch-wide DVD-quality video display, a full keyboard alongside a touchscreen, and optical device for navigation.

The Xperia launch is noteworthy because analysts have indicated this phone to give stiff competition to the iPhone. And why not, the specs are impressive, the form factor small and most importantly, it runs on the most popular operating system - Microsoft’s Windows Mobile unlike the iPhone that is limited to OS X. Take a look at the spec comparison below.

Sony Ericsson executives declined to give pricing on the handset or say how many it plans to ship. The partnership was announced on the eve of the Mobile World Congress, the largest wireless industry conference bringing together more than 50,000 industry executives from some 1,300 companies.

“With Sony Ericsson we are now working with the top five handset makers around the world,” Microsoft product manager John Starkweather said in an interview before the Barcelona wireless conference.

Samsung, Motorola Inc and LG ship cell phones with Microsoft Mobile, while Nokia Corp, the largest handset maker by volume, incorporates Microsoft technology, including Windows Media Player.

Microsoft expects to ship 20 million new phones using Windows Mobile in the fiscal year that ends June 30, Starkweather said.

Spec comparison - iPhone vs Xperia X1

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Got US$45,600 burning a hole in your pocket? Try out Seitz Phototechnik’s 160-megapixel 6 x 17 Digital Camera. And save a bit more of your allowance for a lens, too.

The mammoth device is able to take an image measuring 60 x 170mm, a big notch up from high-end SLRs with a 24 x 36mm frame. It’s got huge handgrips on either side that cry out to be grasped, but it’s 18 inches wide and weighs 10 pounds, so it looks either like a great workout or tripod material to me.

It can be purchased with a tablet PC to operate it, too. That’s doubtless handy, because a single high-resolution file is 307MB in raw format, the company said.

The 6 x 17 Digital employs a digital scanning back made by Dalsa. Scanning cameras employ a linear light sensor detector similar to that used in flatbed scanners; it moves across the field of view to take the photo rather than using a two-dimensional sensor that captures the entire scene simultaneously. It’s a good way to get high resolution, but it comes at a cost: it takes a single second to take a full-resolution 7,500 x 21,500-pixel image.

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Source : Cnet

Historically, console manufacturers have made a loss on the hardware itself and recouped their losses on the resulting software sales. Although Nintendo has claimed that the Wii has been making money since day one, the PlayStation 3 costs Sony money for every unit sold.

However, according to a report in Business Week, the Japanese manufacturer has managed to halve the cost of making the console since launch. The PlayStation 3 launched in the US in November 2006, and during March 2007 in Europe.

The article quotes Nikko Citigroup analyst Kota Ezawa, who believes that each PlayStation 3 now costs approximately US$400 to make, as opposed to US$800 at its US launch. He puts this reduction down to a number of factors, including Sony’s tweaking of the design as well as the shrinking of the internal chips. Ezawa did not specify whether he was referring to the recently introduced 40GB or Sony’s flagship 80GB model, neither of which was available at launch in the US.

Ezawa said, “We think the biggest factor here is that simplification has become possible through a reduction in the parts count, leading to a reduction in costs.”

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Source : Top Tech News

Blu-ray appears to have won the high-def DVD format war, as Paramount announced on Monday that it would dump HD-DVD in favor of Sony’s Blu-ray format. Last week, Warner Bros. also threw its weight behind Blu-ray.

The developments likely mean the end of HD-DVD as a viable format. Based on the studios’ decision, Japanese content producers and hardware manufacturers said they would likely leave the HD-DVD Promotion Group, according to published reports.

Pony Canyon, a content producer that is part of Fuji Television, predicted it would “choose Blu-ray in the end.” Some 20 members of the HD-DVD coalition said their continued membership was “under review.” Universal is the only remaining U.S. studio backing HD-DVD, along with one other major corporation that continues to support the format: Microsoft .

Convergence Picks Up Steam

When the current DVD format was released, consumers rushed to replace their VHS video collections with the superior digital format. But will consumers care about a better DVD format — be it Blu-ray or HD-DVD — when online delivery of TV shows and Hollywood movies threatens to make physical media obsolete?

In the weeks leading up to the Computer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, industry players were busy cutting deals and rolling out new ways to converge content, the Internet and consumer TV sets. For example, Netflix announced a deal recently with LG to deliver on-demand movies to Internet-connected TVs. It’s rumored that Apple will announce deals with Fox and other studios to sell movie downloads via its iTunes Store. At CES, JVC announced a TV set with an iPod port for playing iTunes video purchases on the big screen. And Google and Matsushita announced plans for a flat-screen TV that can display online videos from YouTube and other sites.

Perhaps most significantly, Comcast Tuesday unveiled Project Infinity, a technology to improve the quality and performance of online video, as part of an effort to deliver its huge catalog of TV shows and movies on demand via the Internet and cable. At CES Tuesday, Comcast CEO Brian Roberts demonstrated the technology by downloading the film Batman Begins in four minutes, a download that would take six hours with a standard broadband connection.

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Japanese manufacturer Matsushita (Panasonic) has signed a deal with Google that will see the company launch flat panel television sets that allow users to access YouTube and other Google services such as Picasa Web Albums.The deal is said to be non-exclusive with the first units set to be launched in the United States in Spring.

While this isn’t the first time i deal like this has hit the markets it is a first for Google. This automatically gives Google the opportunity  to connect with a very large section of todays audience.

It seems there is no stopping this juggernaut as its reach seems to be extending into every single means of communication.

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“The second-generation Microsoft Zune media player is that company’s answer to the various iPods Apple has put on the market with at least video and MP3 capability. As a general-purpose media player, the Zune is more than serviceable. It’s not spectacular, but the Zune does just what you’d expect–plays music and videos, displays pictures, and manages your media library. But the question remains: what the heck is inside?”

Go through Cnet New’s breakdown of the Zune player from Microsoft ( Here )

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Source : BBC News

Japan’s largest mobile phone network, NTT DoCoMo, is in talks with Apple about securing a contract to launch the iPhone in Japan, a report says.

The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) said that Apple boss Steve Jobs had been in talks with the head of NTT DoCoMo.

The iPhone would be a coup for NTT DoCoMo which has struggled to attract new customers, analysts say.

Phone networks in the US, the UK, France and Germany are among those already with exclusive Apple deals.

Competition

However, the WSJ said that talks had hit a sticking point over what share of customer revenue Apple would receive under the Japan deal, with the California-based firm wanting the same percentage of income as it gets in deals elsewhere.

The paper said that Apple was also talking with rival network Softbank as a back-up should a deal fail.

NTT DoCoMo has about 53 million subscribers - commanding about half of the Japanese market - but Softbank and KDDI have prompted fierce competition by cutting rates.

Apple has sold more than 1.4 million iPhones since the device went on sale in the US.

Its launch in Germany prompted a legal battle, but Vodafone failed to break up a deal giving rival network T-Mobile the exclusive rights to distribute the phone.

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