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Sony Ericsson have announced a new mobile phone with an exotic looking super-flip form factor. Instead of opening vertically, like a traditional clamshell, the new Sony Ericsson W44S Bravia phone flips open on it side, revealing a huge screen that’s perfect for viewing movies and mobile TV on.

Mobile TV? Yup, this Sony Ericsson’s got the lot.

With half of the world's population owning mobile phones, there's still plenty of room to introduce new mobile phones. The new study by MultiMedia Intelligence reports that the worldwide shipments of multimedia feature rich mobile phones will exceed 300 million units in 2008, outnumbering shipments of TV sets.



Multimedia phone is defined as a handset equipped with an image sensor, MP3 audio support, and video playback. It is estimated that 9 out of 10 handsets are multimedia phones by 2011. According to Frank Dickson, Chief Research Officer for MultiMedia Intelligence:

"Voice services are suffering under increasing price pressure, forcing operators to leverage data services to sustain revenue growth and offset declining voice ARPU. Handset manufacturers are racing to meet the consumer and operator demands for increasingly feature-rich multimedia handsets, while controlling handset cost and power consumption. The result is the mobile phone has become the world's most ubiquitous entertainment platform."

Given the increasing number of multimedia phones, it is now a major factor to retain and gain new customers.

Bang & Olufsen has launched a new mobile phone, supplied by Samsung - the Serenata. The phone features a built-in stereo loudspeaker system, and users have the choice to listen through the integrated loudspeaker system or through the dedicated stereo EarSet 3 earphones or to connect it to their hi-fi as an auxiliary source. The focus has been on providing a music performance with emphasis on playback of "uncompressed" music. Besides handling lossless formats, Serenata also handles playback in compressed formats including MP3, WMA, and AAC