Sony Ericsson Can't Meet Demand For Walkman Phone
DOW JONES NEWSWIRES
September 8, 2005 9:52 a.m.
STOCKHOLM -- Sony Ericsson can't meet demand for its new music phone W800, a company spokesman told Dow Jones Newswires Thursday.
Sony Ericsson, a joint venture of Sony Corp. (SNE) and Telefon AB LM Ericsson (ERICY), started selling its much-hyped W800 globally on Aug. 12.
"We have delivered all original orders according to plan, but new orders have been difficult to meet," said Peter Bodor, spokesman for Sony Ericsson in the Nordic region.
Swedish retailer The Phone House said the W800 failed to make it to its top-10 selling list for August purely because of supply constraints.
The Phone House is a unit of Carphone Warehouse Group PLC (CPW.LN).
Bodor couldn't confirm if the supply situation is similarly constrained in other markets, but said the phone is produced only in the company's Chinese factory.
The W800 is sold under Sony's popular Walkman brand and features a music player and buttons that simplify playing music with it.
Rival Motorola Inc. (MOT) this week started selling its ROKR phone, which includes the iTunes service from Apple Computer Inc. (AAPL), in the U.S. market.
The world's largest mobile phone maker, Nokia Corp. (NOK), plans to ship in the fourth quarter its N91 music phone, which unlike the W800 and ROKR has a hard disk to store music files.
Nokia's phone will have the capacity to store nearly 1,000 songs in its standard form, while Motorola's and Sony Ericsson's products ship with capacity to store just over 100 songs. |
