Sony Ericsson’s June 17th announcement included 5 new phones but the absence of the phones dubbed Paris and BeiBei were mysteriously missing from the lineup. Now we know why… they have been cancelled.

According to the Unofficial Sony Ericsson Blog, Sony Ericsson may have shelved the two phones because of overwhelming criticism from reviewers, mentioning Mobile-Review.com specifically. Apparently sticks and stones may break your bones but words will cancel phone launches.

Here are some of the scathing comments from Mobile-Review:

honestly speaking, this line-up has come out flat-out clumsy

It seems to be that over at Sony Ericsson they believe they can stand up to Nokia and without putting much thought into it they keep releasing direct rivals to the latter’s solutions.

Since there is the Sony Ericsson G900 out there that comes with UIQ 3.0 (which should seem no different from the 3.3 release to the average user), a better camera (5 Mpix), slightly bigger casing and, more importantly, a comparable price tag (it will by the time the G702 arrives), we are not sure why they would need to bring a slew of similar phones to the market and put them up against one another without own product portfolio.

I’m sincerely disappointed, and it’s not the first time by the way, by the strategy Sony Ericsson is currently applying – it’s a dead-end for this particular maker, period.

To sum it up, people felt like the Paris and BeiBei were just crappier versions of the Sony Ericsson C905 Cyber Shot and that these crappier versions didn’t offer enough differentiation, and pricetag difference, to be worthy of their own release.

I guess Sony Ericsson agreed with the criticisms and decided to cut their losses.

[Via USEB]