Sony Ericsson wants to 'do a Walkman' with camera phones

Kicks off new imaging line...

Sony Ericsson has announced it is to produce a line of branded 'high end' camera phones.

The range will kick off with two devices, the 3G K8000 and the EDGE-compatible K790, both of which will sport a 3.2 megapixel camera and carry Sony's digital camera brand, Cyber-shot.

The phones also feature other camera-centric technology including image stabiliser, red-eye reduction and BestPic, a technology that takes a series of photos as soon as the phone's autofocus button is pressed and more snaps after the user has taken a picture, in case any action shots don't quite come off first time.

Sony Ericsson also announced a tie-up with Google's Blogger service to post digital photos taken on the phone straight to an existing blog. The tie-up will enable a blog to be created automatically if the phone's user has no weblog already set up.

According to a Sony Ericsson spokesman, the phone-maker is aiming to replicate its Walkman branding success – three million devices within the line shipped last year - with the new camera range.

The spokesman said: "We needed to establish in the consumer's mind that the phone is a great place to listen to music... We looked at the same opportunity we took with music and we want to apply that to imaging."

The spokesman added Sony Ericsson is hoping consumers will now think of camera phones as genuine cameras. "There were [previously] one or two things that prevented consumers from saying 'this is really a digital still camera'," he said.

While 3.2 megapixels may be considered high end in the UK, it's way behind imaging technology in the Far East. Samsung, for example, unveiled an 8 megapixel device in late 2005.

However, Sony Ericsson's spokesman denied the device is too low-spec to be sold as an imaging device. "From the consumer's perspective, it's the best compromise [between storage and quality]," he said.