NEW DELHI: Sony-Ericsson plans to expand its retail base from the current 23 outlets to around 4,000-4,500 outlets by 2004. While the current retail outlets are under the Sony World centers, the expansion strategy would see the company appointing franchisees to set up sales, service and experience centers. These experience centers would play a critical role in the company's marketing strategy since most of its GSM handsets are positioned at the high end. The company expects 80 per cent of its sales to move through these franchisees by then.

"Customers rarely discover, let alone use half the features that a high end phone offers. From that perspective it is a very important market building exercise to educate the customer," said Sudhir Mathur, Country Manager, Sony-Ericsson.

Sony-Ericsson came into being a year ago after the merger of the cellular handset business of Sony Corp and Ericsson. Over the past year, the company has mostly focused on establishing its brand, streamlining its organizational structure and distribution network. Currently Salora is the company's only distributor in the country although it has also tied up with big time retailers like Agrani Convergence.

During this year the company has launched T100, T200 and T300 in addition to T68-i. It plans to launch P800 and P200 shortly. The major selling point of Sony-Ericsson phones is to pitch on multimedia application and hence most of its phones come equipped with a camera.