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27th December 2009
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 Sony
Ericsson
 Another
company facing difficulties, largely down to uninspired design and
terrible reliability problems. As a result of this, we awarded Sony
Ericsson the "prize" for the worst
handset of 2009, the Sony
Ericsson W705.
The second half of 2009 saw some much-needed innovation
from Sony Ericsson, although it's too early to say if their quality
control issues are fixed. In particular, the Sony
Ericsson XPERIA X10 is attracting some interest, even if the
release has now been delayed until 2010.
 There
are three significant mobile phone manufacturers who are endangered
at the moment - Motorola, Palm and Sony Ericsson. Palm's future
depends on the success of the Pre and Pixi, and it has been trying
very hard to make it work. Motorola is a little different, but the
mobile division is still a core component of the company. But for
Sony Ericsson's parent companies in the joint venture (Ericsson
and Sony, obviously) the failure of their mobile phone business
would not have a significant impact on their bottom line, especially
given the scale of recent losses.
Gone are the glory days of the K750i,
W800i and P900.
Over the past few years, Sony Ericsson have shown very little that
is truly innovative. At present the only smartphone in Sony Ericsson's
range is the XPERIA
X1, which is actually made by rivals HTC. The replacement XPERIA
X2 has been delayed until sometime next year, and the XPERIA
X10 isn't out yet either.
At the moment, the Sony Ericsson venture is not
serving its owners very well, and it is not serving customers
very well either. Despite some truly great handsets in the past,
a dispassionate look at Sony Ericsson might lead you to think that
it would be no great loss to the world if it was closed down completely.
We give it a 50/50 chance for surviving 2010.
 Samsung
 It's
not all doom and gloom in the mobile phone industry, Samsung have
grown strongly throughout the year and in some markets are fighting
it out for the number one slot against Nokia.
While other manufacturers are slimming down product
ranges, Samsung's "scatter gun" approach of trying to
fill every available market niche seems to be succeeding.
Samsung's product launches are prolific, but not
very well coordinated within their own company. There's a lack of
focus in their product range, and often a lack of hard information
about what handsets can do. Despite this slightly ramshackle effort,
Samsung have scored some notable successes, in particular with the
Samsung
Corby (or Genio) and also high-end devices like the Samsung
Pixon 12.
One key feature of new Samsung handsets during 2010
will be the Bada
operating platform. This is really an extension and formalisation
of what Samsung have already been doing, but by creating "Bada"
they are allowing third party developers to create applications
to extend the capabilities of a wide range of phones. In truth,
it doesn't matter a lot to Samsung if Bada fails, but if it succeeds
then it will make Samsung an even more powerful force in the marketplace.
There has also been some speculation about the wide
range of operating systems that Samsung support, currently Windows
Mobile, Android, LiMo and Symbian plus the upcoming Bada platform.
Conflicting stories suggest that Samsung may drop Windows Mobile,
Symbian or both.. and then other stories say that they remain fully
committed. Our bet is that Symbian will vanish from Samsung's lineup,
but Windows Mobile will remain.
 LG
 LG
is the other major Korean mobile phone manufacturer and Samsung's
greatest rival. Growing from a second tier manufacturer a few years
ago to one of the "big five" now, until recently LG have
avoided the smartphone battle by competing mostly in the fashion
phone market.
One of LG's notable phones this year was the LG
BL40 Chocolate, this has enjoyed some market success and critical
acclaim. Elsewhere, LG are busy trying to standardise their own
"S-Class" users interface across smartphones and non-smartphones
alike.
LG have pushed into the Android marketplace with
the LG GW620
and Windows with the LG
GM730. Expect to see a few more smartphones next year, but we
still think that the bulk of LG's efforts will be on their fashion
phone range.
 RIM
/ BlackBerry
 We
got some flak when we suggested that there were black
clouds on the horizon for the BlackBerry brand, because on the
surface it seems that sales are booming.
But the lack of innovation from RIM this year has
been shocking. In the space of a year, the handful of products they
have released include the BlackBerry
Storm2, essentially just a bugfix of the previous year's BlackBerry
Storm, and some other marginal
upgrades to existing handsets where the main improvement has
been replacing the navigation roller with a track pad.
RIM's traditional "cash cow" market of
corporate email is under attack from Microsoft, and competition
in the consumer sector is becoming brutal. RIM is countering this
by pushing into new markets, and the result of this is that profits
keep going up and up.. but in the long term, our view is that RIM's
BlackBerry range is far too limited and doesn't seem to have an
obvious way to develop. Perhaps RIM might choose to ditch their
proprietary operating system and look elsewhere, Android for instance.
But we don't expect to see much action from RIM until sales growth
starts to falter, and we think that we will start to see the first
signs of this in 2010.
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