Panasonic Android Smartphone Coming March 2012

Panasonic has confirmed its return to the European mobile phone market with a first Android smartphone, coming in March 2012, due to head up a full range of models. Panasonic is back, and the Japanese tech firm is certainly aiming high!



After having withdrawn from the European mobile phone market in 2005 following a series of handsets that failed to win over consumers, Panasonic is ready to try its luck in European phone market once more, confident from the success of its recent smartphones in Japan.

From March 2012, Panasonic is due to return to the potentially profitable and yet highly competitive European mobile market with a first super-slim Android smartphone. With its sleek rounded edges, this handset is both water-resistant and dust-resistant, and has a 4.3-inch QHD OLED screen as well as an NFC (Near Field Communication) chip.

8-Megapixel Camera (Like the Apple iPhone 4S and Samsung Galaxy S II)

Panasonic's new smartphone has an 8-Megapixel camera. Although no more tech specs are available about this particular feature, we can only hope it'll use a backlit CMOS sensor and that it'll come with the Mobile Venus Engine already seen in some of the Panasonic smartphones launched in Japan.

It seems that 8-Megapixel cameras are all the rage right now in high-end smartphones. Take a look at these six models in our cameraphone Face-Off to see how they compare.

Panasonic is aiming high with its comeback, and is hoping to sell 1.5 million smartphones in Europe in the coming financial year. What's more, the firm is hoping to sell 15 million handsets worldwide by 31 March 2016, including 9 million in Europe, Asia, China and the USA. The remaining 6 million handsets, of which 5 million smartphones, are to be shifted in the Japanese market.

These are pretty lofty ambitions for a market that's largely dominated by Apple and Samsung, and which, according to research by IDC, could soon see the Nokia-Microsoft alliance gaining significant presence in the sector. Panasonic will therefore have to work hard to make its products stand out from the huge range of often very similar smartphones already on the high street, especially with Chinese firms like Huawei and ZTE determined on dominating the entry-level sector. To succeed, Panasonic will need to bring added value to its phones with decent services and solid partnerships with network operators—that said, the firm's high-end brand image should help things move pretty smoothly on that front. As for developing an original design for its smartphones, we can only hope Panasonic does a better job than it has with its TVs over the last few years ...

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