Sony Ericsson unveiled eight phones Tuesday aimed at helping the world's fourth-biggest mobile phone maker boost its market share in emerging and developed markets.
The company, a joint venture between Stockholm-based LM Ericsson and Japan's Sony Corp., is already well known for its high-end line of phones, including the music-playing Walkman, as well as its camera phones.
While four of the new models the company unveiled in London had fewer features, it said they still packed enough features to lure customers.
Sony Ericsson also unveiled its W880 and W888 third-generation phones, products designed to take on Finnish rival Nokia Corp. and U.S.-based Motorola Inc. in the high-end market.
The phones, which are just over a third of an inch thick, can store as many as 900 songs on a 1-gigabyte memory stick and sport a 2-megapixel camera. They come in a stainless-steel finish and are expected to be available before spring.
The company also showed off its latest Walkman phone, the W610, a candy bar-style phone that can store as many as 470 songs on a 512-megabyte memory stick. Like the W880, it has a camera but also features TrackID, which lets the user record a portion of a song and identifies it by name, artist and album. It's expected to be released during the second quarter of 2007.
Sony Ericsson also extended its Cybershot camera-phone line with the K810 and K550 models. The company said its first Cybershot phone, the K800, has already sold more than 4.5 million units worldwide.
Sony Ericsson will launch four basic, entry- level phones in the second quarter, including the K200 and K200 camera phones, one of which includes FM-radio popular among users in Latin America and Asia.
It is also launching the J110 and J120 candy bar-style phones, which offer basic talk and text functionality.
Steve Walker, Sony Ericsson's head of product marketing, said the new phones were aimed at "hitting the right price point" and would be sold in emerging markets, as well as Europe, North America and Asia.