February 11th, 2008 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Platforms: Windows Mobile | No Comments »
At the GSM World Congress today, SonyEricsson announced to start the production of their first Windows Mobile based smartphone.
The use of Windows Mobile is new for SonyEricsson. That is why they probably outsourced the development of the Xperia X1 phone to competitor HTC. In the past, all smartphones from SonyEricsson where based on the Symbian UIQ OS which SonyEricsson and Motorola own.
The release of a Windows Mobile based phone from SonyEricsson has some benefits for the mobile gaming community. Porting Symbian games is easy and in most of the cases, Windows Mobile devices are easy to port to devices. For the J2me community, it might mean that touchscreen support is needed as softbuttons are not always available. However this might not be the case for the Xperia of course.
On a side note, Nokia announced to stay loyal to their Series 60 platform. A Windows Mobile device is not expected from the Finnish market leader. Microsoft does now provide Windows Mobile to all other of the top 5 handset vendors.
