Sony Ericsson Falls out of Friendship with HTC
It is rumored that the cell phone giant Sony Ericsson will hire another Taiwanese manufacturing company to assemble its second generation of Xperia qwerty cell phone. We were expecting that HTC would have secured all Windows Mobile deals by Sony Ericsson. Now it seems that Xperia X2 and any future Windows Mobile based qwerty cell phones will be manufactured by Mobinnova.
Not much is known about Mobinnova and the reason of this move is not revealed. Some experts are speculating that there has been some disagreements between Sony Ericsson and HTC regarding their possible merger. Sound impossible? Nevertheless Peter Chou, the CEO of HTC mentioned that this merger was a possibility in 2007. It really seemed that both cell phone companies had much in common, yet their paths have separated now. It is rumored that their relationship started to deteriorate after HTC officially announced their involvement in developing Google G1 qwerty cell phone.
An alternative story goes that Sony Ericsson was unhappy with a delayed UK release of the Xperia first generation. It is, however, unlikely that HTC would be to blame. The Taiwanese company is famous for high quality and speedy development – that’s why Google picked it to develop their G1 phone.
It is not necessary that this fall-out would interfere with Xperia X2 development. Sony Ericsson has its own Windows Mobile development office in USA and in fact all they need is a good and obedient manufacturer that doesn’t ask too many questions. Besides there have been hints that the next Xperia will probably be a platform-independent phone, which gives more flexibility of choosing the right Operational System for the cell phone.
