Sony Ericsson Admits 2010 Mistakes

Pocket-lint managed to grab a hold of Sony Ericsson acting  head of global marketing, Steve Walker, at CES and sat him down for a chat about what the company is up to and how they've learnt from the mistakes they made in 2010.

I do not think its an understatement to suggest that Sony Ericsson 2010 Android line up, especially the X10, proved to be rather less than the success the company would have hoped for. Reflecting on that Walker explained:

"Its 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.
Fair enough thats a frank enough admission, but then again HTC and Samsung seemed able to get it right for 2010 so why not Sony Ericsson? At any rate Walker is not dwelling on the past, rather he says Sony Ericsson has learnt from its past mistakes and "As we do every year, we have taken those learnings and applied them to the new products in the new portfolio. We do think we have taken a big step forward for 2011."

Sony Ericsson big mistake last year was to marginalise the hardware, the X10 being the prime example of that. By the time it was released it was simply not up to scratch in comparison to other products as Walker confirms:
"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."

Speaking of software Walker acknowledged that Sony Ericsson completely underestimated the level of passion customers would display with regards to the outdated Android version that shipped with the X10 or the poor update cycle "Last year we didnt anticipate the strength of feeling that consumers would have towards the Android release".

The Xperia arc, unveiled at CES is the first of many new products this year, and also the first, Walker says, to take onboard the lessons learnt in 2010.