[Xperia Arc General] stan.s:
Let me comment, please.

I have 30 years of IT experience, and 15 of that in application development in FT100 companies.

SE was unable to take part in the astounding demand for new cell phones this year for a number reasons and they don't yet understand the Android philosophy:

1. They were unable to bring X10 family the USA market early.

2. The hardware was excellent when it was announced over two years ago, but they did not make any changes to that hardware to keep that edge. There was no slip-streaming of a better CPU/GPU or "N" wifi etc. SE took advantage of the reduced costs 'by the time' they went to actually manufacture the phones and made design decisions that compromised the performance of the phone, it's upgradeability and saved them money in the parts list.

3. SE continues to not be able to engage serious interest by T-Mobile in SE phones while not one of the two top carriers, is one that they could certainly make a phone for. Equinox is the only phone they are currently selling and only the TM506 prior to that.

4. SE's move to ATL (according to some posts on XDA by former SE Raleigh staff) and the general reduction in programming staff lost those programmers most familiar with the AT&T firmware testing. Historically in the AT&T relationship, AT&T NEVER RELEASED a second firmware for any SE phone even though SE traditionally has released several versions for every phone they have ever made. AT&T has never felt that updates were important for any phone they sold, to them, it is just a pain in the ass. MS forced them to do updates for Windows phones and the contract with Apple didn't give them a choice.

5. Android is supposed to compete with iPhones IOS. One of the ways that makes the iPhone so desirable is that even the old hardware runs the new version of the OS. This means that people who want to stay in grandfathered contracts have a way to resell their old phone to people who don't want to upgrade to a subsidized phone and don't care about the latest and greatest hardware version. Prior model iPhones were selling for $100-$199 just as the last version came out. (Many were shipped to markets not covered by Apple.) This funds the purchase of new models either subsidized or not. Android OS updates make the phones resalable. A Android phone that is out of phase with the latest OS is worthless for resale. SE and other OEMs don't seem to be taking this into account as a part of Apple's strategy to make the iphone have increased value and are not applying it to their own strategy.

6. SE's heads have decided to "not compete on hardware." Well, this is a problem since the people who are looking for Android phones specifically are generally technical and would certainly look at hardware. The X10 was targeted at women as if it was a traditional SE fashion phone with enhanced social networking, all those early ads were showing women using the phone. The Captivate and the X10 arrived within 'days' of each other. The Captivate certainly has the hardware spec advantage over the X10a. Even small things like the internal storage was huge by comparison, as well as the full 512mb ram. Even though the Captivate phone is seriously flawed and fairly ugly, the 'hardware' outsold the X10 by 30x (at AT&T alone). AT&T has not found it necessary to 2-4-1 it or even reduce the pricing significantly, and it was MORE expensive than the X10a through the entire cycle. SE's proud it made 29-30% in the first 3 qtrs 2010 on the phones, but the last quarter I think we will see that number reduced due to the heavy discounting they did to dump the X10's in stock.

SE's so proud of the 30% markup? Apple makes 100%. Samsung was using parts they actually manufactured in other divisions such as the screens, memory and other components, it would not surprise me if they made 50 or 60%.

7. SE didn't listen customers or even to their own employees. SE gave X10's to every SonyStyle store employee to drum up support for sales. Guess what, every SonyStyle employee that I've spoken to, and I have spoken with more than a dozen, either sold the phone right away or gave it away to a family member. I could not find a single employee that actually used it. As a result they didn't really know how to use or demo it in the stores and since many have iPhones or other Android devices didn't even know it didn't have MT (witnessed by them trying to pinch zoom). The actual sale of a phone ( I bought two of these at SonyStyle stores in two different states), was a 'rare' event that the manager used for training other employees. SonyStyle was giving these phones away for Xmas sales with a two year contract, again to dump inventory. Employees when they realized that I was not just some old guy but a technical person were questioning why I would even WANT a X10. (It wasn't so much for the phone as for SE support which I have always liked and the better than run-of-the-mill PC software to link the phone which they butchered with the X10.)

8. Yes, SE never promised 2.2 or MT. (And some of the other companies have reneged or delayed a 2.2/2.3 update for many phones.) As for the global 1year policy, this is terrible, as the phone will only have been in the US for 8 months. However, with the admitted failure to deliver good customer service this year after the reorganization, Android 2.2 or 2.3 would certainly be a good will gesture to the millions of X10 owners and would make the phone worth a few dollars in resale. Only a buy back program for upgrading would be better, though the ARC with less than 300mb internal storage and 512mb ram, an already 6 month old CPU/GPU combo (which is now very cheap) isn't 'cutting edge' by a long shot.