Sony announces 3G handset...
SONY PLANTS ITS FLAG IN THE THIRD GENERATION WITH
"COSM" CONCEPT PHONE
Sony Wireless Telecommunications Co. (WTC) made a series of intriguing
announcements at a news conference this morning. Among them, Sony
kicked off its largest marketing campaign to date, and introduced a new
pager and dual-mode handset. The star of the show, however, was
definitely Sony's "Cosm" CDMA concept phone. The Cosm starts with the
basic smartphone idea that a growing number of manufacturers--most
notably Nokia Corp. with its Nokia 9000--have experimented with, and
then drives it straight into the domain of third generation services.
The Cosm's keypad, earpiece and microphone are on a front cover that
flips up and over the back of the handset to reveal a 320 by 200 pixel
active matrix color display with 16-bit color depth capable of displaying
65,535 colors. Instead of the built-in keyboard of the Nokia 9000 or the
stylus-based handwriting recognition of Samsung's SCS-100, the Cosm
uses a variation of the jog-dial that has featured so prominently in the user
interface of other Sony phones. The Cosm's "3-D Jog-Dial navigator"
functions much like a mouse, allowing the user to enter text from a soft
keyboard, navigate menus, and even select areas of the screen to be blown
up for easier viewing.
The Cosm uses a proprietary Sony processor, but relies on the
open-standard web environment for its software. Applications are HTML
or Java-based. Sony envisions the Cosm benefiting from a growing number
of third-party applications, which will be downloadable to the phone over
the Internet. These will almost certainly include organizer functions, but
Sony bristles at the idea that the Cosm is just another phone/PDA combo.
The Cosm is the centerpiece of Sony's Digital Wireless Audio Visual
Entertainment (D-WAVE) concept. The applications mode is effectively a
"personal home page" configured with information from external web sites.
According to Sony WTC President Yukato Sato, the Cosm will be used for
multimedia-based Internet applications and video e-mail, as well as for
playing downloaded music and video games. (One of the more interesting
features is an "airplane mode" that turns the radio off entirely, allowing the
user to use these downloaded features in flight.)
It is also telling that the first optional hardware add-on for the Cosm is a
snap-on digital video camera. With the tiny camera in place, users will be
able to capture and store still frames, add voice annotations, and e-mail the
whole package over the net.
Sony said it is already doing laboratory testing with Sprint PCS, and plans
to continue doing so throughout 1998. Actual commercial deployment could
come in 1999, although that is uncertain, as is the cost to the customer.
Sony CTW Vice President of Sales and Marketing David Whalen said the
Cosm will be rolled out as Sprint deploys the IS-99 CDMA data standard.
As for pricing, he said that Sony wants the product to be rapidly adopted
by consumers, and pricing will be an important part of making that happen.
He suggested the Cosm will fall somewhere between voice-only handsets
and PDAs or palmtop computers in price.
Of course, the consumer electronics industry has had no difficulty producing
jaw-dropping prototype devices in the past. The constraint remains network
bandwidth. According to Whalen, most of the applications imagined for the
Cosm could theoretically be done now. The problem is that at data rates of
14.4 kbps, they would take longer than most users are willing to wait. Sony
could choose to market the unit with 14.4 data support, and its still
photography and web access capabilities could very well find users,
especially in vertical markets such as real estate.
Ultimately, however, the Cosm is a third-generation terminal waiting for the
network to catch up. Whalen admitted that Sony wanted to do live demos
of the Cosm, with actual web access if not full-motion multimedia, but could
not get 1900 MHz CDMA coverage set up at Atlanta's Georgia World
Congress Center in time.
Although the Cosm's gee-whiz factor tended to overshadow Sony's other
introductions, the company did bring out two new products. For voice
users, Sony introduced the CM-Z200 ZUMA, a dual mode 800 MHz
AMPS/CDMA version of its tiny CM-Z100 PCS and analog CM-RX100
handsets. The ZUMA packs its dual-mode circuitry into a package
measuring 3.6 inches by 2.4 inches by 1 inch and weighing only 5.3 ounces.
The ZUMA uses a snap-out microphone boom that also turns the phone on
and off. Battery life is 2.3 hours of talk time and 40 hours of standby with a
Lithium Ion battery.
Sony also broadened its pager line with a mid-range addition, the
MP-3000. Available in the second quarter, the MP-3000 replaces the
jog-dial on Sony's higher end MP-7000 with a less expensive two-button
arrangement. The 2.7 ounce pager includes backlighting and vibration
functions. |
