Sony Ericsson on upcoming Android devices: “we’ve taken a big step forward for 2011”

Sony Ericsson has several upcoming Android devices launching this year – one in particular is the new Arc that was announced at CES. Sony Ericsson has an “ambition to become the global number one handset provider on the Android platform”. A great interview by Pocket-Lint with Steve Walker Acting global head of marketing for Sony Ericsson reveals the release of the X10 and X10 mini devices were actually not up to par with their standards and that they were only “a learning experience” for future devices.

Walker stated that “Last year we didn’t anticipate the strength of feeling that consumers would have towards the Android release. And again that was a learning experience of the first year of mass market Android smartphones… The first generation of handsets in our portfolio was about getting the capability out there…It’s important to remember that 2010 was the first year for mass market Android handsets. Yes there had been one or two things out from HTC previously, but when we started to design our 2010 handsets in 2008, nobody really knew the dynamics of the Android smartphone market or even what the smartphone market was going to be… None of us could predict 2 years previously, to what extent users would switch into smartphones. None of us could really predict what would be more important and less important for consumers… As we do every year, we’ve taken those learnings and applied them to the new products in the new portfolio. We do think we’ve taken a big step forward for 2011… We talked a lot about the platform and the software. The hardware was important but the hardware played second fiddle. What we think is different in 2011 is that consumer attention is swinging back to hardware once more. That’s not to say people aren’t focused on software, but that they are a little more in balance now”.

Source: Pocket-Lint