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Sony Ericsson Announces First Walkman Phone

Posted by samzenpus on from the all-in-one dept.

jonknee writes "Sony Ericsson has announced the first in a new line of self-described "Walkman phones" that specialize in playing music. The W800i features a 512MB memory card to store tunes and up to 30 hours of playback (if you keep the phone off, otherwise about half that). We should see a Motorola phone with iTunes onboard within the next two weeks, making March the month of music phones."

2 of 204 comments (clear)

  1. Re:All in one? by nutshell42 · · Score: 4, Interesting
    The thing is not everyone needs the best of everything. Many people need/want a device really good at one thing (be that taking notes, playing music or ringing during a movie) and are happy if it's "good enough" at many other things.

    Now I assume you're at home or at work. Take a look around. Unless you're very rich and have a very sophisticated taste chances are that you have one or two things in your view that are what you'd call excellent. Could be your computer, your display, the hifi-280.1-80MW-Armageddon-stereo or perhaps the $800 armchair you're sitting on. But most things probably fit in the "good enough" category. You're desk is probably nothing special, but it's good enough. The $20 speakers? Good enough. The Ikea lamp? Good enough.

    People always wonder why Apple is at 5% market share. And while there's a myriad of reasons and I don't want to oversimplify it, imho the most important reason is that Steve Jobs is one of those quality freaks I mentioned above who have the money, the time, the inner drive and a good enough (no pun intended =) taste to strive for excellence in everything they own and everything they do. Most of us don't.

    Well seems like I got a bit off topic here. But to make the connection: Sony, Nokia, etc. realized that the iPod is an excellent player and it has a strong entry barrier (its market share and the ITMS) for other players that makes it hard for competitors even if they were superior and even more so if they're just good enough. So they do the next best thing. They take other devices where they have the network effects on their side (phones as in the article, handhelds, see the PSP or PDAs) and add a music player that is good enough. If it's really good enough many people won't bother to cough up another $300 with the exception of about 5%.

    jm2 =)

    --
    Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
  2. Re:Yeah... by recharged95 · · Score: 3, Interesting
    "Features of the Sony Ericsson W800i include everything of the K750i"

    OK, no WiFi, but it's got bluetooth. That would classify it as having Wireless. Anyway, when you're transferring 512MB, the USB2.0 cable is the way to go [quickly].

    Wonder what different features being a 'Walkman' brings to the table. My 750i has high quality headphones, AM/FM stereo and MP3 player (and vga video camera). Only advantage I see is a *bling* walkman brand name sticker, 2.0MP camera and [really] the 512MB stick. You can only play a few songs with 42MB!