14 DAY TRIAL // Wireless carrier Vodafone UK made a quite interesting move yesterday, namely it removed the Sony Ericsson Xperia X2 from its plans. The handset was present on Monday on Vodafones's website with the “coming soon” tag over it, yet it cannot be seen there anymore, meaning that the operator, which was expected to launch the Xperia X2 exclusively in the UK, has dropped it.
Moreover, a recent article on WMPoweruser also states that the company has already informed its employees of the move, via an internal email, and it has also confirmed that the Sony Ericsson Xperia X2 won't be offered on the UK via its sales channels. For what it's worth, this does not sound like a very good deal for the Japanese-Swedish handset vendor, one should agree.
The Xperia X2 was expected to land at Vodafone running under Microsoft's Windows Mobile 6.5 operating system. The mobile phone was announced officially a few months ago, and Sony Ericsson has been hard at work ever since with the development of software solutions for it, yet it seems that the company failed to deliver the handset to the market in due time.
It is not unusual for Sony Ericsson to delay the launch of its handsets, most of you might already know that. Handsets like Satio, Aino, Pureness or the Android-powered Xperia X10 had been announced to the world a few months before being actually released on shelves, and the same applies to Xperia X2, which was supposed to land in November 2009, but got delayed all the way to January 2010.
The handset vendor has been through a series of difficult quarters lately, and its latest devices, including the X2, were expected to help it regain its foothold. Vodafone's decision represents another hit for the troubled handset maker, yet we should wait for an official explanation, if it comes, to see what determined the carrier to make the move.