Sony Ericsson voices Android concerns

Sony Ericsson confirmed that it has no immediate plans to launch handsets based on Android

Following the launch of the first phone based on Google's Android, T-Mobile's G1, Sony Ericsson has revealed that it has reservations about the open source mobile platform.

At a media event in Copenhagen this week, Sony Ericsson confirmed that it has been testing Android, but does not have plans to launch handsets based on the platform anytime soon.

Mats Lindoff, Sony Ericsson's chief technology officer, said that the firm had been testing Android with prototype devices, and that Google's was a " holistic" approach.

"[But] to go with mass production and working with prototypes are two different things," he explained. "If you want to give every service away to Google, then Android is the perfect solution."

Lindoff also revealed that a major factor in Sony Ericsson's decision to work with Windows Mobile for its Xperia model was to crack the US market, although he did not rule out working with Symbian in the future.

Lindoff was cagey about Sony Ericsson's plans for the corporate market. " Business people are normal people. People are not all the same so we need to develop different phones for different consumers. There are different market segments," he said.

"You can niche yourself to BlackBerry but they do not sell 104 million phones [a year]."

However, in a heavily consumer-focused presentation, Sony Ericsson president Dick Komiyama claimed that the firm's vision for the future involved "enhancing the consumer side but getting into the enterprise too".