Sony Ericsson Intros BlackBerry Killer

CIO Today reports about Sony Ericsson's newly introduced 3G phone, the M600, which "is targeting both the business market and Research In Motion's BlackBerry" with its advanced messaging capabilities.

The M600 runs the Symbian 9.1 operating system and supports an array of push e-mail applications, such as Ericsson Mobile Office, iAnywhere OneBridge, Intellisync, Microsoft Exchange, and RIM's BlackBerry Connect, provides remote synchronization, enables users to surf the Web while making voice calls simultaneously. The M600 also is a dual-mode UMTS/GPRS converged voice-data handheld with 80 MB of internal storage.

According to IDC analyst Dave Linsalata, the M600 takes Sony Ericsson "communicator devices to the next level, targeting mobile professionals with links to a broad array of e-mail providers." He said, "The key for the company is developing devices that users need, with features for business users and consumers, as opposed to the BlackBerry, which is focused tightly on information and e-mail."

However Linsalata noted that by "adding more bells and whistles, such as streaming multimedia content, to a converged voice-data handheld might not appeal to some enterprise users who want a mobile device that excels at a single task, like the BlackBerry does."