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Slow and steady wins the race |
pallan007
Joined: Oct 03, 2008
Posts: 1
PM |
Slow and steady wins the race
This used to be Sony Ericsson's policy always.
I am Hari manickam and working as an engineer at Ford in UK. Please read through this mail and please do not delete this thinking this is Spam. I am trying to make some sense here. I request you to get back to me if this makes sense.
I am an ardnt fan of Sony Ericsson and I have never owned any other brand in the past 10 years. I was shocked to see a press note on one of the websites when SE boss said the company is planning to split up and Sony is planning to split from ericsson. I do not see a reaon why you should.
I have been following the brand and its marketing strategy from a consumer's point of view and these are my views.
The phones that you take a long time to develop and launch have always been a success
Eg: T68
T 610
K700
Project clara K750 and its variants W800,810 and 700
The k790,800,810
The projects which were aimed at making cheaper variants of the good ones quite did not work well
T300 etc
Currently you have a great line up. But look at the time you took to develop these phones. Werent they really quick and isnt there a lot of overlap of features between the models?
Sony ericsson was always a manufacturer for phones of mid, upper mid and top end phones. Now it is a bit evident that you are trying to focus on the entry segment as well where you have loads of volume and can make more money.Do you think an auto maker like mercedes can ever do that. They have the A class and the B class cars. Do you think they are doing well or do you think they follow the mercedes DNA?
Same fashion, I feel SE should focus more on mid and phones higher in the higher range which is your strength.
I recently saw a news that you are plannig to launch a successor for the SE K750 with a 5MP camera. How different do you think this is going to be from the current K850? If u think K850 is not doing well and this is to replace that, you could be thinking right. I feel that the K850 is not doing well because of the positioning of the call pickup and call drop buttons.
A primary fucnction of a phone is to pick up calls and it has to be a very prominent button. It is as equal in importance to the shortcut and the clear button and one has to take special care to press one button alone and not the other accidently when he tries to push one.
I feel the new sony ericsson phones are not true to the DNA with the call pickup and drop buttons ( green and red). It has made your phones operationally so close to Nokia. You might argue that a majority the phones in the world have the same buttons. But that is what which kept SE in a separate league from the others. Now since you are going towardsthe common world platform, you are no different from any other phone. I am aware that you went to this format to be friendly to Java . But you had the left softkey, the joystick button and the right soft key which could act as 3 buttons in Java mode and the right one can be used as a back button in java mode. You still have 3 buttons to position your options, select, back keys respectively. ( im not sure if this makes sence in a technical perspective but makes sense in a common customer's point of view).
The back key is so distinct in an SE phone and it was so user friendly. The use of back key was used earlier but was more popularised after its presence in SE phones.
Most of the HP printers have a back key
Mercedes S class menu interface has a back key now and many other cars.
Im being too fussy I guess but it does not feel like using an SE phone if you divert from your standard format. You might argue that your earlier phones like the t68, a3618 had a green and red key. Yes they had . But they never had separate soft keys and that used to be distinctly different. I agree that that UI was not very user friendly with the expanding functions and you created your UI with the back key which was great.
I have been loyal to ericssons for the past 10 years. I started off with a T28, then T68, T610, K700, W 810 and now I have bought the G900.
The G900 was one among the new phones that had the back key and I was not left with a bigger choice to choose other phones.
Your G500 or 502 ( sorry for not being sure) . Can you tell me if it looks any different from the Nokia 6233?
One more serious blunder I would say is in the W580/S500. I appreciate it adhering to the traditional UI. But your main idea was to make a thin phone and there was a mojor compromise in durability and qualiy. Most of the phones had the ' 8 ' button broken in the keypad in about 3 months use. This was a major quality goof up. Is this because you are losing focus on making proper phones? Do you want to make more average phones than a few super phones? (Mercedes cannot survive if they do that)
To summarise
Be slow and steady
Make phones that would make a punch in the market rather than making millions of phones with average presence ( always used to be the way SE worked until about 1.5 years back)
Revert back to your usual ' back key ' user interface. ( im not sure if this makes sence in a technical perspective) . But it definitely makes a difference in consumer's perspective. I have a group of friends who are SE fans and they are so disappointed about the change in the UI format.
Decrease product overlap. You do need that. But I don’t see why you should have a C series when you have a K series.
Retain your mercedes status. Don’t produce more phones which are average.
This is the press note from which I got the news
Sony's CEO, Howard Stringe, is said to be thinking of breaking away from Ericsson, who collectively form mobile phone giant Sony Ericsson. Stringer admitted in an interview with a German newspaper that this hadn't been one of their better years - what with poor sales, profit warnings, and the like. He then went on to say said "buying out a partner is never an easy thing", possibly hinting of Sony buying out Ericsson. He said he wants to work alogside Ericsson, and recapture the success they had two years ago - namely with the Walkman and Cybershot line of handsets. Continuing from that sentence, and, most interestingly of all, he said "Or the joint venture will have to find its own solution". So, in a nutshell, it seems if Sony Ericsson cannot recapture the few glory years they had, from 2005-2006, it could very well be that Sony will be giving Ericsson the boot, and going in the mobile phone business alone - and possibly releasing a PSP phone on their own after all.
I am sending this mail to the probable email that howard could have.
Mr Howard, please get back to me if I make sense in this mail.
Thanks and Regards
Hari Manickam | |
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QVGA
Joined: May 23, 2006
Posts: > 500
From: Pakistan
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Slow and steady wins the race. Thats sounds very good written in a book but the reality is different.
SE was slow and steady with the P990 in case you missed that in your research |
Muhammad-Oli
Joined: Jun 13, 2004
Posts: > 500
From: The NZ of L
PM |
That's a big rant. I can't say I agree entirely, and you are a bit misinformed on some aspects.
"Decrease product overlap. You do need that. But I don’t see why you should have a C series when you have a K series."
I agree about reducing product overlap, but SE no longer has a K series. It has been superseded by the C series. I mean, even if they kept calling them the K series, they'd run out of numbers eventually. And it's just a letter anyway. The K800i could have been called the C800i and it would've still been the same otherwise.
Your comments about the back button seem a bit misinformed too. Have you used an SE phone with the new software and button layout for a large amount of time? I have had experience with both the old 'back button platform' (A1, etc) and have been using the newer A2 platform since Jan/Feb and I would never ever go back. It is such a huge improvement. And besides, it does have the back button, it is almost always the right softkey and the only exception to this is when there is no need for a back button (eg. You can't go back any further). So really, nothing is missing at all. Maybe this is just a case of you not being prepared for change, or not being used to a new thing.
I think that at this stage there is very little danger of Sony and Ericsson splitting. They are a big company and there have been a lot of recent reports on what SE are doing to change, and save themselves. They are pretty safe in my opinion.
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2008, 2009, 2010 Best Australasian Member. |
adsada
Joined: Aug 23, 2008
Posts: > 500
From: Scotland
PM |
Muhammad-Oli, I agree, the new layout is a great improvement, on the A100, I never got the hang of it, and was always getting annoyed at it. The new layout is so simple, it's great. Nothing stays the same forever, face it things will always change so stop being so sentimental. Also you kept referring SE with Mercedes, different thing altogether. I also think you took the CEO of Sony Ericsson out of context a little bit. They said, they will try to work along side Ericsson to get my the wonders they had a year back. Their not going to split up, Sony might buy over Ericsson, yes, but splitting up = very unlikely |
@ftyk
Joined: Apr 20, 2008
Posts: 139
PM |
well i have been saying that for quite some time now that maybe it is time for sony to go solo...i personally have more faith in the japs than in the swedes when it comes to my gadgets/appliances.
[addsig] |
djin
Joined: Jun 13, 2007
Posts: > 500
PM |
Seriously, it was the sleep which let the slow and steady win, and apparently no other manufacture's sleeping, while increasing their pace. So if SE increases the pace and become's steady, its really a WIN for SE.
[ This Message was edited by: djin on 2008-10-05 01:43 ] | |
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Posted: 2008-10-03 14:56
