Australia will not see the Sony Ericsson P800 Smartphone until February 2003 after the struggling Swedish-Japanese mobile phone maker delayed the roll-out date yet again.

The high-end P800, touted as Sony Ericsson's flagship product, was originally slated for release in the third quarter of this year. This was pushed back until the fourth quarter, and finally the company claimed it would be later in the quarter rather than sooner, with the P800 in stores before Xmas.

Sony Ericsson has now revealed only three countries will see the phone before Xmas. "We will launch it in Sweden, the United Arab Emirates and in Greece next week, because that is where we have service centre," said Roger Bolander, who is responsible for the firm's mobile phone sales in the Nordic region.

A spokesperson for Sony Ericsson Australia told ZDNet Australia   the company was doing final testing on the P800, because they wanted to make sure everything was right. She didn't believe the delay would have a negative impact on sales. "I think it's one of these products which, like a PDA, is very expensive," she said. "Business users will be able to hang out for it."

She said Xmas shoppers were more likely to purchase lower end phones as presents. The Sony Ericsson T200 and T300 are already on the market, and the entry-level T100 along with the micro-sized T600 are expected to be in stores next week.

Sony Ericsson has been steadily losing market share to competitors Nokia, Motorola, Samsung and Siemens, partly because it has been unable to deliver its phones in volume to shops in time.

Sony Ericsson has some five percent of the global market and company officials said it needed between seven and 10 percent to become profitable. Nokia makes more than every third phone sold.

The high-end P800 is one of only a few products so far jointly developed by Sony and Ericsson. It will follow in the footsteps of the highly successful T68i colour screen mobile with an attachable camera.

The telecoms industry believes that sending pictures between mobile phones in the same way that users now send short text messages will be the next popular application generating new revenues and creating demand for more advanced handsets.

The P800 is a combination of a digital camera, mobile phone and a Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) with a large colour screen. Sony Ericsson estimates that without a subscription, it could sell for AU$1,500 to $2,000.

"It will not be a mass-market phone. It has a clear target group and is expensive, but I do not fear it will not sell," said Per Alksten, marketing manager in the Nordic region.

The P800 will compete with Nokia's 7650 colour screen mobile phone, which also has an built-in camera, though no PDA functions.

Nokia said Tuesday that demand for high-end colour screen phones was low and that therefore it would not sell as many this year as earlier expected.

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