Xperiancers

Getting ready for the webcast

// September 15th, 2008 // No Comments » // ANNOUNCEMENTS, X1 EVENTS

Hi, I’m Magnus and I’m the Senior Product Manager for Xperia X1 at Sony Ericsson. I would have blogged sooner, but I’ve been tied up in lots of launch meetings all week (I can guess what you’re thinking, why didn’t I blog from my Xperia X1 – simple really, I haven’t had time to catch up with the guys from Wolfstar to get my blog account set-up).

This week I’m in London. On Monday I’m doing a live webcast where I’ll be demonstrating the Xperia X1. You can ask questions through the webcast or by following Xperiancers at Twitter and asking your questions. We’ll get through as many as we can during the webcast and will follow up those we can on the blog later in the day. You can log-on to the webcast at www.sonyericsson.com/premiere.

On Thursday I’ll be at TENT London, which is part of the London Design Week. It’s the global launch news conference and it will be a great opportunity for people to actually get their hands on an X1. I’m really looking forward to hearing what people have to say about the X1 and our unique panel concept allowing you to personalise and choose from several active desktops.

See you later.

Busy week for the X1 team

// September 15th, 2008 // No Comments » // ANNOUNCEMENTS, X1 EVENTS, XPERIA X1

Hi, just wanted to give you an update on what’s been happening with the Xperia X1 team. – Last week we’ve all been at CTIA IT & Entertainment in San Francisco showing the X1 to as many media and interested people as possible as part of the build up to the phone’s launch later in the month.  We haven’t announced a launch date for the North American market yet, but our US colleagues will be making their own announcement about the launch over here on November 3rd so watch out for that one.  Sony Ericsson held a Xperia X1 discussion panel breakfast meeting on Wednesday where Microsoft, Handango and SPB joined us to discuss the unique panel interface of the X1 and how opening the SDK to developers will enable us to build a rich panel eco-system for consumers to enjoy.

I also attended a Microsoft sponsored press mingle on Wednesday evening, the apple martinis were a bit on the sweet side, but there was some interesting people at the event.  Spent most of the evening chatting with Chris Davies and Vincent Nguyen from www.slashgear.com which was fun.  Seem to meet Vincent at every event I go to and he’s a lovely chap to have a drink with plus a big fan of the X1. Vincent managed to persuade Kei Kakoi one of the founding members of the Xperia X1 project based here in San Francisco to give him a full X1 demo.

We didn’t stay long at the Microsoft event as we had to head over to the Gracenote party – their parties are always pretty special and not to be missed.  This one was at Bong Su, a fusion Vietnamese restaurant and the food was delicious.

I’m now back in London for a very busy week – what with our Johnny X webcast later today and then the TENT launch Thursday to Sunday at the Truman Brewery, it really is going to be a bit of a week. I hope to see you at Tent as the exhibition space is going to look pretty special – we couldn’t just do a regular tradeshow set-up as we need to be able to hold our heads up among all the design and architecture companies that will be exhibiting.  We’ve really pushed the boat out on the space design and visuals so I hope you can make it down there and give us your feedback.

It’s the final countdown to the Xperia X1 launch

// September 10th, 2008 // 14 Comments » // ANNOUNCEMENTS, X1 EVENTS, X1 NEWS

The Xperia X1 will launch on September 30, and that’s official.

It will initially be available to customers in the UK, Germany and Sweden, rolling out into other markets across Europe, Asia and Latin America later in the fourth quarter (Q4) of 2008.

In fact, we’ve now got a programme of events which we can talk about with loads of opportunities for those of you who want to get more acquainted with the Xperia X1 to do so.

First off, we’ve got a preview event and a free webcast on next Monday, September 15 at 13:00 UK time (GMT +1). This will include a live Q&A with Magnus J Andersson (the senior product manager for the Xperia X1).

You’ll also see actual production models of the phone. The webcast will also launch the phone’s marketing drive which takes the form of an online thriller split up into nine episodes. If you want to tune in to the webcast, you just need to log on to www.sonyericsson.com/premiere.

After that, the first public previews will take place between the 18^th and 21^st of September at Tent London as part of London Design Week. There will be the opportunity for some bloggers to attend the media preview for this in the early evening on September 18.

The North American, Chinese and Russian launch dates will be announced by the local markets in the coming months.

UPDATE: The official news release is now on the corporate site.

Welcome

// September 9th, 2008 // 4 Comments » // FEATURED, X1 EVENTS, X1 NEWS, XPERIA X1

Hi, welcome to Xperiancers.com, the Xperia blogger’s centre. We’ve created it so that Sony Ericsson can start to understand and engage in all of the conversations that are already happening about the Xperia.

It’s fair to say that up until now, apart from with the developer community, we’ve not done a great job of listening to and talking with the wider blogging community. This is our first step in changing all that. We’ve been inspired by some of the great initiatives by other companies, but this is very much our own idea and we hope we’ve learnt from what others have done.

To help us we’ve taken on Wolfstar, a public relations company that specialises in social media. Now I know that will worry some of you, but I promise it shouldn’t. This site absolutely isn’t about old-fashioned spin and marketing. It’s a genuine initiative to improve the two-way conversation between Sony Ericsson and you, our customers. Wolfstar are going to help us do that.

The reason that we’ve decided to focus on the Xperia is that we think it is such an exciting and powerful new handset and its already had an amazing amount of buzz and attention.

You’ll be hearing from lots of different people over the next few days and weeks. This post is a joint effort by Merran Wrigley (a senior corporate global PR bod at Sony Ericsson) and Stuart Bruce (the managing director of Wolfstar) and we’ll both be authors. Other authors will include several members of Sony Ericsson’s development team, as well as people from Wolfstar.

We’ve got lots of exciting news and ideas to talk about, so please subscribe to our feed and use the comments to let us know what you think.

Merran Wrigley and Stuart Bruce