Sony Ericsson unveils Idou touch-screen smartphone

Sony unveiled the Idou touch-screen phone at Mobile World Congress

Sony Ericsson has kicked off this year's Mobile World Congress in Barcelona with the unveiling of a new consumer positioning and a pair of new phones.

Similar to Nokia's Ovi platform, the new Entertainment Unlimited service aims to bring together music, imaging, gaming, content services and applications into one single offering.

Sony also announced an extension to its PlayNow Music service, dubbed MediaGo, which will allow consumers to download movies onto their PC and side load them onto their Sony Ericsson phone, with automatic formatting for the device done on the fly.

The company last year struggled with plummeting profits, which led to the loss of 2,000 staff. It hopes that by combining the technology from its parent companies, such as Walkman for music experience, and Cyber-shot for imaging, as well as bundling in Java gaming and messaging integrated with services and applications, it can reignite the division.

Sony also aims to enhance the connectivity of its phones, allowing the sharing of content between devices such as consoles, TVs, PCs and Hi-fi systems.

"Entertainment Unlimited lets us reinforce our position as the communication entertainment brand," said Lennard Hoornik, head of global marketing and vice president at Sony Ericsson.

"Everything that we have done to date has brought us to this point - we created the music phone category in 2005 selling over 100 million Walkman phones and we are now ready to unveil the next chapter in the evolution of the company - Entertainment Unlimited - giving consumers unlimited opportunities to share their entertainment experiences."

As well revealing its new direction and focus, Sony Ericsson unveiled two phones, the W995 Walkman phone and a touch-screen iPhone rival under the concept name Idou.

Due to be released around the middle of 2009, details of the Idou are scarce, but the device features a 3.2in 16:9 touch-screen and a 12.1-megapixel camera with a Xenon flash.

Although the company recently signed up to the Open Handset Alliance, which backs the open source Android platform, Idou will run on the Symbian Foundation platform.

"Entertainment Unlimited is at the core of Sony Ericsson's philosophy, building on the strength of our great entertainment assets such as Walkman and Cyber-shot phones and our unique service and applications integration," said Dick Komiyama, president of Sony Ericsson.

"Many of the strategic initiatives we've announced in the past year have laid the internal framework to launch this new consumer proposition to the market, and Sony Ericsson is now ready to drive the next wave of market development with Entertainment Unlimited."