Sony to release first Walkman branded Mobile Phone W800

In what might be a groundbreaking move from the entertainment giant Sony, we now have the first Walkman branded Mobile Phone from the stable of Sony. Sony Ericsson today announced the arrival of their latest mobile phone - the W800. Sony wants the consumer to believe that a mobile can act as a replacement of the digital music player where Apple has given Sony enough nightmares in the last couple of years.

Apple with their iPod range of music players supported nicely by their iTunes music store have taken the lead in the digital music player market and taken the initiative away from the king of cassette and CD players Sony. So much so that one of the senior representative of the Sony Entertainment publicly admitted that ignoring MP3 as a supported standard was a big mistake from them which gave the baton to Apple to promote their iPods.

Sony’s new mobile phone comes with a 512MB Memory Stick card and gives a battery life of 30 hours when used as a music player rather than a mobile phone. The package also includes relevant accessories like headset and a decent software suite for managing music both on the device and through a PC.

In addition, the phone also offers PIM functionality, comes with a two mega pixel camera with auto focus and support for Java games plus a 65k color screen.

A representative of Sony said in a statement that Sony has been working on making a mobile player a decent music player in the similar ways Mobile companies have been working on making them a good digital cameras in the last couple of years. They expect to establish the W800 as a credible music player and start the trend of a new generation of gadgets, which combines the power of Mobile Phones and Digital Music Players.

Although it gives Sony a potent weapon to put against Apple iPod which obviously lack the phone capabilities. Sony plans to target it as a phone capable of storing and playing music in the initial days. Later they would popularize its support for Sony’s SonyConnect online music store so that consumers can actually buy and store songs on their Sony Phones.

Apple is also working on a similar device in collaboration with Motorola where the latter company would be launching products compatible with Apple’s iTunes Music Store.

Sony would be using two popular Open formats for the music storage in MP3 and AAC. This is a major change from earlier policies where Sony used their own proprietary format in ATRAC 3. However, Sony continues to use their own memory stick, which is the only form of storage media supported by the W800. They plan to make this phone available in the retail market by the third quarter of this year.