London (UK) – After a series of delays, SonyEricsson said that it is ready to launch its Xperia X1 smartphone at the end of this month. The phone will become available in fourth quarter in almost three dozen countries in Asia, Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America. Consumers in the North America and a handful of other key markets around the globe will not get the phone initially.

If you have been waiting for SonyEricsson’s Xperia X1 smartphone as an option next to Apple’s iPhone 3G, you should not get too excited about a possible launch of the phone yet, at least if you live in countries such as U.S., Canada, Russia, Germany, UK, China or Australia. The manufacturer said that it is focusing on 35 markets in Asia Pacific, Western and Central Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America initially.   

It appears that SonyEricsson is especially avoiding high-volume markets in the beginning, which could mean that the production volumes for the phone are not as high as initially anticipated and basically translate into another delay. “Availability dates for North America, China, Australia and Russia along with other countries not mentioned above will be announced by local markets in the coming months,” the company said.

In a press release, Rikko Sakaguchi of SonyEricsson noted that the company is “extremely pleased with the innovation and new user experience [the company] created for consumers.

“The in-depth demonstration on the web cast will showcase how this handset is truly unique. The nine panel eco system puts the user in total control of the primary experiences available on the phone and allows consumers to personalize the panel interface to suit their needs and lifestyle.  The Xperia X1 has the highest quality screen on the market, four-way navigation keys and optical joy stick to give a stressless browsing experience and, with its super fast processor and network speed the Xperia X1 really bridges the gap between personal, entertainment and work mobile needs,” he was quoted.

The very limited launch of the device, along with a just recently released developer kit for applications that can be tailored to the X1, raise questions of SonyEricsson’s time line and its ability to match Apple’s smartphone and its growing ecosystem. At least for now, all the puzzle pieces appear to be falling into place for Apple and its iPhone 3G.

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