Sony Ericsson has launched a new digital Walkman phone and a
Bluetooth media device which will let people play music, video and pictures from their phone via their TV or hifi.
The new phones, which should be on the market later this year, will come with special CD ripping software which will let consumers transfer music to their phone. Needless to say, there is also increased memory and battery life capacity to enable more sophisticated media usage on the phone.
Sony
Ericsson will hope that the Walkman's heritage in the music space will help them capture a decent share of the digital music market. That logic, of course, has not yet worked in the
MP3 player space, where Sony's digital Walkman has failed to take on Apple's iPod. However insiders hope the Walkman phone will be sufficiently distinguished from the iPod - perhaps monopolising the mobile music space while Apple continue to dominate in the online download domain.
All of the key mobile players are eager to enter the mobile music space, with Nokia and Motorola also in the process of launching combined phones and MP3 players. All the key players are expected to make further announcements in this space at the CeBit mobile phone convention in Germany later this month.