Sony Ericsson focuses on Android, shuts Windows for now.

WorldWide Tech & Science. Francisco De Jesús.

Sony Ericsson has revealed it will rely on the open-source Android platform to help it climb back up the handset vendor rankings, effectively dropping Windows Phone for at least the rest of the year.

 In an exclusive video interview with Mobile World Live, filmed last week at Ericsson's Business Innovation Forum in California, CTO Jan Uddenfeldt said the smartphone vendor’s main strategy will be Android. “Android is experiencing really fantastic growth,” he commented, adding that the company expects to see a seven-fold increase in industry Android shipments in 2014 compared with last year. That will equate to more than 400 million Android devices and a market share for the operating system of 55 percent.

Uddenfeldt pointed to the company’s release of six products supporting the latest Android release 2.3 (Gingerbread) as proof that Sony Ericsson is a major player in the Android space, claiming “nobody else is even close to that.” He added: “When we talk about the Android market we are basically number 3 or 4 in that market; that’s really where the big growth is and will determine the success of the company… 

We have the ambition of being number one on Android and that is, of course,a much higher market share than we have today.” Uddenfeldt said the vendor has not completely ruled out Windows Phone as a supporting OS, but admitted “right now we are not launching any Windows products for this year… we think Android is a much stronger proposition."