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ATLANTA—Cingular Wireless L.L.C. will add two more handsets to its portfolio—both Walkman music phones—from Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications L.P. in the next couple of weeks, the carrier acknowledged.
The first to be released will be Sony Ericsson’s W300i, which will be offered through Cingular’s Web site and the carrier’s big-box retail partners, but not in Cingular stores. The second handset, the Sony Ericsson W810, will be marketed through Cingular’s retail stores, online and in big-box retail outlets, including Best Buy.
The new handsets stand as an expansion of Cingular’s music-related service offerings, according to a carrier spokesperson. The carrier already offers Motorola Inc.’s Slvr, Rokr and Razr V3i phones, all of which can download music through Apple Computer Inc.’s iTunes service. Sony Ericsson phones do not support iTunes—Motorola has an exclusive deal with the iPod vendor—but the W300i, for instance, includes a USB cable for porting music from a PC and Disc2Phone music-management software.
“We want to offer music to our customers the way they want to receive it,” said Kelleigh Beal, a Cingular spokeswoman.
The addition of two Walkman handsets at Cingular represents an incremental step for Sony Ericsson’s retail strategy in the United States, where it is constrained by producing GSM-only products and has only one tier-one carrier relationship.
