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Sau đây là một đoạn interview người đứng đầu Sony Ericsson tai Nga về tương lai của SE sắp tới. Mình thấy cũng có nhiều thông tin thú vị nên muốn share cho mọi người. HÌnh như là ko đúng topic nhưng cũng ko biết share vào đâu nữa, hy vọng moderator đừng xóa..
"Pavel Zentrich's first official interview. The head of Sony Ericsson's Russian office airs his summary of a year spent in the position. Smape.com learns of his vision touching on the company's long-term plans. Actual questions meet professional responses. First hand statements about the most important matters.
The former head of Sony Ericsson's Russian office Roger Bolander took a leave for the Swedish office; Pavel Zentrich comes from the mother Sony company where he started his career in 1993. Starting from 2000, he has been working in the company's telecom department. At different points of time he oversaw Sony's progress in regional departments in the Netherlands, Germany, Greece and Italy. Between 2005 and 2007 he was the head of the Greek office. On May 1st, 2007 he was appointed the head of the Russian office.
During the two years of his work in Greece, Mr. Zentrich demonstrated a substantial progress, bringing about a substantial increase of Sony Ericsson's share on the local Greek market, securing a leading position for the company in the camera and music phone segments. Over the course of the last year, Pavel never gave an interview to the media; Smape.com has just become the first ezine to interview him after the long silence.
In these days, Sony Ericsson firmly stand their ground in Russia, occupying the third line in the chart of the top mobile gadget vendors of that country, Nokia and Samsung being the first two respectively. An active promotional campaign and an exhaustive portfolio make the company a strong player in the mid-end class, yet its hi-end and budget models are hardly anywhere as impressive. Certain niches are kept empty with no adequate SE product about to fill them. Sony Ericsson's actual plans are those of filling the portfolio gaps as quickly as possible, the maximum priority given to the low-end.
Basing off data collected by Gartner & Gfk, the company holds a 15-16% share of the Russian market measured in the number of sold handsets and 19% in terms of revenues. That's quite an achievement considering an only fifth position of the company in the international chart of mobile vendors, next to LG occupying the fourth place. Historically SE have maintained the highest average selling price value on the whole market. In Russia, this amounts to $271 against a $219 average value calculated from all the resent vendors brought together (data collected by J'son & Partners). A number of key debuts including the C905 model are to induce a considerable raise in SE product sales; simultaneously, the company will start rooting in the low-end market segment, offering a variety of new budget models.
What local peculiarities of the Russian telecom market you could possibly point out, basing on the experience you accumulated during the last year's work in Russia?
The Russian market has always been to us of a strategic value, in terms of the highest ASP value and sales volume alike. The most prominent trait of the local market here is, of course, the total lack of carriers' participation in product distribution. That's neither good or bad, to my opinion. What goes to Sony Ericsson's positions in Russia, I'm happy to see we've got some very firm ground here for our foundation to rest on. To my mind, that's because the target audience gave a warm response to our latest Walkman products; the planned strategy for this segment works in Russia perfectly. Recently we switched to a direct import of our products into Russia, which only further underlines the importance of this region to our company.
What were the company's largest achievements during the previous year?
As of now, Sony Ericsson occupies a third place among Russia's telecom leaders. This achievement was made possibly largely due to the good sales in the mid- and hi-end segments. Our growing activities in the budget class will further serve to secure our positions worldwide and in Russia alike. What is of great importance, our brand is becoming more recognizable, winning a loyal audience of Russian customers. A stunning variety of the local music always keeps the world-renowned Walkman brand in high demand here.
Tell us a few words about your vision of how the workers of the former Sony and Ericsson companies interact inside the merged company and if there's still a feeling of some split between the two groups.
Six years ago, when the merge took place, the two parts which were in a big need of each other finally met, which to my mind was a historical event. Sony brought along the consumers' and resellers' attention – the whole marketing thing, to tell you the truth. It also made a huge contribution to the gaming and music department of our portfolio. Ericsson had all the technology, knowledge of the telecom market and established relations with the carrier companies. The resulting mixture proved to be of a unique sort. I would never start talking about the prevalence of some specific clan stemming from one or another of the two founding companies. The President of the corporation comes from Sony, yet a large number of top managers originally were in Ericsson, including the second most important person in the whole company. I think suggesting the prevalence of Sony is simply untrue.
What are the marketing plans of Sony Ericsson as far as the budged class products go?
Our company defines low-end products as those priced below 100 euros. As you know, we have always been making a big point of mid- end hi- end products. Once the T610 model equipped with a color screen and sporting MMS support was out, we took great pains to continue the progress in this direction. Nevertheless, the low-end market segment will soon feel our growing presence there, the J series of SE handsets being a vivid example. We plan expanding our portfolio in such a manner that it would contain products to fit in every possible price bracket. We must keep working hard in the low-end segment if we want to retain our positions among the top three mobile vendors on the Russian Market. That's not just a week's rush, but rather a serious business we are going to be into for years from now on.
What are your general impressions of joint operation with Sagem in low-end product design? ODM is something you would prefer over your genuine production in this segment, or not really?
As you know, we have been acquiring platforms and technologies originally designed by that company. S302 and W302 are the first fruits of our collaboration. In the nearest future we plan announcing more products based on Sagem technology. That doesn't equally stand for a total cease in our own development. Besides the mentioned J series, an R product family, standing for extended radio capabilities, is currently in the works. We also deal with other companies acting as our ODM partners, yet retain an own production facility in Chine. I don't think the end buyer would really ever care about the place of production. That's why we haven't got any geographical or national priorities as to choose the producer and place of production, the only real concern being the genuine quality and balance of the end product.
What specific group of low-end product seems the most important to you for the time being? Why should the loyal audiences who have been buying mid- and hi-end SE products ever take preference of lower-ranking solutions?
We split the low-end class into a number of segments. I must admit Sony Ericsson is at the peak of its activity mostly in the top segments, we haven't even got a single monochrome display model in the whole portfolio. And such ones aren't likely to sprout up. Regardless of the price we retain a number of specialty features in any model. For example, our R product sport an unmatched radio capability, an AM support in particular, which is likely to meet a ready demand in a number of Russian regions. The same goes to the rest of solutions – we are always offering more features than our competitors do.
Is it likely that Sony Ericsson phones will eventually get a dedicated audio chip planted inside? The question primarily concerns the Walkman line, of course.
We generally make use of very powerful CPUs which handle multitasking with especial ease – you can run several application at the same time without losing a notch in the performance rate of each individual running program. That's why we see little reason in making a separate audio chip, nothing of the sort is currently planned. Our exclusive Clear Audio
Experience technology is a huge step forward. It allows to reduce the noises and beef up the basses. The new technology was developed in cooperation with Sony, who possess an all-embracing experience in designing Hi-Fi audio products. At the same time, we are constantly developing service applications like Shake Control or TrackID. The latter also poses certain interest to the carrier companies, offering revenues from the traffic, and finally, Sony benefits from selling the music.
As of now, a 3.5 mm standard audio jack is only found in XPERIA X1 and in a limited number of ODM low-end models, is there a chance we will see one in the upcoming Walkman models?
We have a slightly different approach to this point. We offer our customers a choice. By supplying an adapter in the box, we offer a more flexible solution. You don't have to take the phone out of the pocket while talking using a headset, and the audio quality is preserved intact. Moreover, our new products like W902 will come with a brand new kind of headset which will actually offer the possibility of plugging two pairs of micro earphones into a single jack. This feature has seen some successful use in conventional music player. Currently we don't have any plans for integrating the 3.5 mm jacks in Walkman products.
What are the company's plans considering the formation of Symbian foundation? As far as the smart gadgets go, do you plan going on with UIQ smart phone production or this interface will soon be tagged obsolete?
We will keep supplying our partners with the existing UIQ smartphones, yet we would hardly speak of any such new model appearing in the future. The Alliance has been just formed, and no global decisions were taken so far. The only thing that is absolutely clear is that the whole foundation will serve as a common pool for ideas and technologies. As you know, back in spring we launched the new XPERIA brand, which includes an assortment of WM solutions. Its characteristic feature is a combination of business and entertainment features. The first XPERIA model, - X1, - will be introduced to the market just this year, the next year seen as the real time for a number of following XPERIA models to appear. I wouldn't dismiss the chance of a more affordable candy bar appearing in the XPERIA family, yet this surely won't happen until the next year. This year's only planned XPERIA market entry is X1.
You aren't afraid of possible internal competition between Symbian and Windows Mobile products?
Our company has always valued open standards as far as our attitude to the end customers and carriers goes. Symbian is a very promising direction of development in this sense – once a future software developer tests their products for compatibility with the Foundation's common platform, they will be automatically granted a full support for their application on all the phones based on that platform. In this sense, proprietary systems suffer serious limitations. As for Windows Mobile, that's a pretty new platform to us, so Symbian is given more priority in our plans. Depending on how the Symbian Foundation develops in the future, we will either keep or switch these priorities. No matter how things go, we always seek to offer a kind of an alternative to the end user.
Sony Ericsson's conventional phones, will these ever get a support for the touchscreen technology? What are the global technological priorities of the company for the current day?
I wouldn't dismiss such a possibility. The trend is very actual, especially considering the latest tendencies of the telecom market. Yet we currently have no planned announces of conventional phones coming with touchscreens. Currently we have only three priorities – the camera, the music and the global positioning. The latest direction was started not too long ago, so we are currently investing an enormous amount of effort to back up this branch of our products. Web surfing is another big point to us. We have already mentioned the low-end models. Finally, we have high hopes in fashion and gaming product lines. The recent F303 model sports extended gaming capabilities, to serve as an example. The accelerometer allows for more fun, controlling the fishing rod or a bowling player's hand with the movements of the handset. We foresee a warm response from a youth audience to this kind of mobile entertainment. We should also take into account the online services which are also very actual. Still we are more concentrated on the hardware features, unlike our market rivals.
Pavel, we warmly thank you for choosing Smape.com for giving your first exclusive interview in the position of the head of the Russian SE office.
It'll be a pleasure to keep your readers in touch with the latest news in the world of Sony Ericsson from now on."
Summary: Mình thấy có một số điểm mới thế này:
1/ Nhiều công nghệ mới về audio sẽ được tích hợp như: Clear Audio Experience Technology,...
2/ Dòng Walkman có thể sẽ ko bao giớ tích hợp jack audio 3.5mm bới vì liên quan đến nhiều accessories mà nếu dùng jack này thì sẽ ko xài được.
3/ XPERIA X1 (hehe..tớ thích cái này lém) chắc chắn sẽ có mặt trong nam nay. Năm sau sẽ là một XPERIA brand-new!!!
Let's read and discuss!
"Pavel Zentrich's first official interview. The head of Sony Ericsson's Russian office airs his summary of a year spent in the position. Smape.com learns of his vision touching on the company's long-term plans. Actual questions meet professional responses. First hand statements about the most important matters.
The former head of Sony Ericsson's Russian office Roger Bolander took a leave for the Swedish office; Pavel Zentrich comes from the mother Sony company where he started his career in 1993. Starting from 2000, he has been working in the company's telecom department. At different points of time he oversaw Sony's progress in regional departments in the Netherlands, Germany, Greece and Italy. Between 2005 and 2007 he was the head of the Greek office. On May 1st, 2007 he was appointed the head of the Russian office.
During the two years of his work in Greece, Mr. Zentrich demonstrated a substantial progress, bringing about a substantial increase of Sony Ericsson's share on the local Greek market, securing a leading position for the company in the camera and music phone segments. Over the course of the last year, Pavel never gave an interview to the media; Smape.com has just become the first ezine to interview him after the long silence.
In these days, Sony Ericsson firmly stand their ground in Russia, occupying the third line in the chart of the top mobile gadget vendors of that country, Nokia and Samsung being the first two respectively. An active promotional campaign and an exhaustive portfolio make the company a strong player in the mid-end class, yet its hi-end and budget models are hardly anywhere as impressive. Certain niches are kept empty with no adequate SE product about to fill them. Sony Ericsson's actual plans are those of filling the portfolio gaps as quickly as possible, the maximum priority given to the low-end.
Basing off data collected by Gartner & Gfk, the company holds a 15-16% share of the Russian market measured in the number of sold handsets and 19% in terms of revenues. That's quite an achievement considering an only fifth position of the company in the international chart of mobile vendors, next to LG occupying the fourth place. Historically SE have maintained the highest average selling price value on the whole market. In Russia, this amounts to $271 against a $219 average value calculated from all the resent vendors brought together (data collected by J'son & Partners). A number of key debuts including the C905 model are to induce a considerable raise in SE product sales; simultaneously, the company will start rooting in the low-end market segment, offering a variety of new budget models.
What local peculiarities of the Russian telecom market you could possibly point out, basing on the experience you accumulated during the last year's work in Russia?
The Russian market has always been to us of a strategic value, in terms of the highest ASP value and sales volume alike. The most prominent trait of the local market here is, of course, the total lack of carriers' participation in product distribution. That's neither good or bad, to my opinion. What goes to Sony Ericsson's positions in Russia, I'm happy to see we've got some very firm ground here for our foundation to rest on. To my mind, that's because the target audience gave a warm response to our latest Walkman products; the planned strategy for this segment works in Russia perfectly. Recently we switched to a direct import of our products into Russia, which only further underlines the importance of this region to our company.
What were the company's largest achievements during the previous year?
As of now, Sony Ericsson occupies a third place among Russia's telecom leaders. This achievement was made possibly largely due to the good sales in the mid- and hi-end segments. Our growing activities in the budget class will further serve to secure our positions worldwide and in Russia alike. What is of great importance, our brand is becoming more recognizable, winning a loyal audience of Russian customers. A stunning variety of the local music always keeps the world-renowned Walkman brand in high demand here.
Tell us a few words about your vision of how the workers of the former Sony and Ericsson companies interact inside the merged company and if there's still a feeling of some split between the two groups.
Six years ago, when the merge took place, the two parts which were in a big need of each other finally met, which to my mind was a historical event. Sony brought along the consumers' and resellers' attention – the whole marketing thing, to tell you the truth. It also made a huge contribution to the gaming and music department of our portfolio. Ericsson had all the technology, knowledge of the telecom market and established relations with the carrier companies. The resulting mixture proved to be of a unique sort. I would never start talking about the prevalence of some specific clan stemming from one or another of the two founding companies. The President of the corporation comes from Sony, yet a large number of top managers originally were in Ericsson, including the second most important person in the whole company. I think suggesting the prevalence of Sony is simply untrue.
What are the marketing plans of Sony Ericsson as far as the budged class products go?
Our company defines low-end products as those priced below 100 euros. As you know, we have always been making a big point of mid- end hi- end products. Once the T610 model equipped with a color screen and sporting MMS support was out, we took great pains to continue the progress in this direction. Nevertheless, the low-end market segment will soon feel our growing presence there, the J series of SE handsets being a vivid example. We plan expanding our portfolio in such a manner that it would contain products to fit in every possible price bracket. We must keep working hard in the low-end segment if we want to retain our positions among the top three mobile vendors on the Russian Market. That's not just a week's rush, but rather a serious business we are going to be into for years from now on.
What are your general impressions of joint operation with Sagem in low-end product design? ODM is something you would prefer over your genuine production in this segment, or not really?
As you know, we have been acquiring platforms and technologies originally designed by that company. S302 and W302 are the first fruits of our collaboration. In the nearest future we plan announcing more products based on Sagem technology. That doesn't equally stand for a total cease in our own development. Besides the mentioned J series, an R product family, standing for extended radio capabilities, is currently in the works. We also deal with other companies acting as our ODM partners, yet retain an own production facility in Chine. I don't think the end buyer would really ever care about the place of production. That's why we haven't got any geographical or national priorities as to choose the producer and place of production, the only real concern being the genuine quality and balance of the end product.
What specific group of low-end product seems the most important to you for the time being? Why should the loyal audiences who have been buying mid- and hi-end SE products ever take preference of lower-ranking solutions?
We split the low-end class into a number of segments. I must admit Sony Ericsson is at the peak of its activity mostly in the top segments, we haven't even got a single monochrome display model in the whole portfolio. And such ones aren't likely to sprout up. Regardless of the price we retain a number of specialty features in any model. For example, our R product sport an unmatched radio capability, an AM support in particular, which is likely to meet a ready demand in a number of Russian regions. The same goes to the rest of solutions – we are always offering more features than our competitors do.
Is it likely that Sony Ericsson phones will eventually get a dedicated audio chip planted inside? The question primarily concerns the Walkman line, of course.
We generally make use of very powerful CPUs which handle multitasking with especial ease – you can run several application at the same time without losing a notch in the performance rate of each individual running program. That's why we see little reason in making a separate audio chip, nothing of the sort is currently planned. Our exclusive Clear Audio
Experience technology is a huge step forward. It allows to reduce the noises and beef up the basses. The new technology was developed in cooperation with Sony, who possess an all-embracing experience in designing Hi-Fi audio products. At the same time, we are constantly developing service applications like Shake Control or TrackID. The latter also poses certain interest to the carrier companies, offering revenues from the traffic, and finally, Sony benefits from selling the music.
As of now, a 3.5 mm standard audio jack is only found in XPERIA X1 and in a limited number of ODM low-end models, is there a chance we will see one in the upcoming Walkman models?
We have a slightly different approach to this point. We offer our customers a choice. By supplying an adapter in the box, we offer a more flexible solution. You don't have to take the phone out of the pocket while talking using a headset, and the audio quality is preserved intact. Moreover, our new products like W902 will come with a brand new kind of headset which will actually offer the possibility of plugging two pairs of micro earphones into a single jack. This feature has seen some successful use in conventional music player. Currently we don't have any plans for integrating the 3.5 mm jacks in Walkman products.
What are the company's plans considering the formation of Symbian foundation? As far as the smart gadgets go, do you plan going on with UIQ smart phone production or this interface will soon be tagged obsolete?
We will keep supplying our partners with the existing UIQ smartphones, yet we would hardly speak of any such new model appearing in the future. The Alliance has been just formed, and no global decisions were taken so far. The only thing that is absolutely clear is that the whole foundation will serve as a common pool for ideas and technologies. As you know, back in spring we launched the new XPERIA brand, which includes an assortment of WM solutions. Its characteristic feature is a combination of business and entertainment features. The first XPERIA model, - X1, - will be introduced to the market just this year, the next year seen as the real time for a number of following XPERIA models to appear. I wouldn't dismiss the chance of a more affordable candy bar appearing in the XPERIA family, yet this surely won't happen until the next year. This year's only planned XPERIA market entry is X1.
You aren't afraid of possible internal competition between Symbian and Windows Mobile products?
Our company has always valued open standards as far as our attitude to the end customers and carriers goes. Symbian is a very promising direction of development in this sense – once a future software developer tests their products for compatibility with the Foundation's common platform, they will be automatically granted a full support for their application on all the phones based on that platform. In this sense, proprietary systems suffer serious limitations. As for Windows Mobile, that's a pretty new platform to us, so Symbian is given more priority in our plans. Depending on how the Symbian Foundation develops in the future, we will either keep or switch these priorities. No matter how things go, we always seek to offer a kind of an alternative to the end user.
Sony Ericsson's conventional phones, will these ever get a support for the touchscreen technology? What are the global technological priorities of the company for the current day?
I wouldn't dismiss such a possibility. The trend is very actual, especially considering the latest tendencies of the telecom market. Yet we currently have no planned announces of conventional phones coming with touchscreens. Currently we have only three priorities – the camera, the music and the global positioning. The latest direction was started not too long ago, so we are currently investing an enormous amount of effort to back up this branch of our products. Web surfing is another big point to us. We have already mentioned the low-end models. Finally, we have high hopes in fashion and gaming product lines. The recent F303 model sports extended gaming capabilities, to serve as an example. The accelerometer allows for more fun, controlling the fishing rod or a bowling player's hand with the movements of the handset. We foresee a warm response from a youth audience to this kind of mobile entertainment. We should also take into account the online services which are also very actual. Still we are more concentrated on the hardware features, unlike our market rivals.
Pavel, we warmly thank you for choosing Smape.com for giving your first exclusive interview in the position of the head of the Russian SE office.
It'll be a pleasure to keep your readers in touch with the latest news in the world of Sony Ericsson from now on."
Summary: Mình thấy có một số điểm mới thế này:
1/ Nhiều công nghệ mới về audio sẽ được tích hợp như: Clear Audio Experience Technology,...
2/ Dòng Walkman có thể sẽ ko bao giớ tích hợp jack audio 3.5mm bới vì liên quan đến nhiều accessories mà nếu dùng jack này thì sẽ ko xài được.
3/ XPERIA X1 (hehe..tớ thích cái này lém) chắc chắn sẽ có mặt trong nam nay. Năm sau sẽ là một XPERIA brand-new!!!
Let's read and discuss!
