Sony Ericsson unveils new handsets

Sony Ericsson has unveiled a range of new business and consumer handsets, including the P910 smartphone which combines PDA, email, web browsing and mobile phone.

The manufacturer has shipped 10.4 million handsets over the past three months, equating to sales of €1.5bn and net income of €89m.

Miles Flint, Sony Ericsson's new president, announced that the P910 would be available by the end of September.

The new model supersedes the P900 by adding a flip-down Qwerty keyboard for emails, and an expanded internal memory of 64MB for corporate applications.

Business users can also use the phone to access and view emails on a 262k colour screen, and the P910 supports most push email providers, including RIM BlackBerry, Smartner, IBM, Extended Systems and Visto.

The tri-band GSM/GPRS phone, which Sony Ericsson estimates will cost roughly the same as the P900, uses the Symbian v7.0 operating systems and UIQ user interface.

The P910 will also come with free or trial applications including Avantgo, the Opera browser which enhances the view of HTML internet pages, and HP Runestone which allows users to print emails, calendar and contact details directly to a Bluetooth-enabled HP printer.

"The key functionality for the business professional will be email on the move and this can be achieved through our smartphones and Edge PC datacards," said Jan Wäreby, corporate executive vice president for marketing and sales at Sony Ericsson.

Sony Ericsson also unveiled a K500 handset aimed at the youth market, which includes exclusive gaming content such as a 3D version of Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell Pandora Tomorrow.

With a 1.9in 65k TFT colour screen and 12MB of internal memory, the K500 is geared towards users that want gaming, movies and music videos on their handset.

The company also said it will release a European version of its Z500 tri-band Edge phone in the fourth quarter of this year, as well as two Bluetooth headsets.