Handset maker Sony Ericsson kicked off the 3GSM World Congress festivities tonight with an exclusive press bash at Barcelona's Metronom. Sony Ericsson President Miles Flint was on hand to help kick off the show's first big party of the week.The big star of the Sony Ericsson party was the company's newest device, the Sony Ericsson W880i, a super-thin 3G music phone that can store up to 900 tracks.

In addition to the W880i, Flint talked up his company's success with the Walkman phone line, one of the only music phone hit products to date. I was at 3GSM in 2005 when Sony Ericsson showed off the first Walkman phone. Many members of the press were skeptical. They claimed a tired old brand like the Walkman would have no resonance in the mobile market.

How wrong they were. Since then, the company has gone on to ship 20 million Walkman phones, proving that mobile music is a big hit with consumers.

Despite the coolness of the W880 and general success of the Walkman phone line, the ghost of the iPhone drifted over the party with everyone talking about it. It's amazing that the iPhone is still the talk of the industry almost six weeks after the news first broke.

Sony Ericsson had no big news on the smartphone front, but Flint said that the company plans to make an announcement concerning it's Symbian interface, UIQ, on Wednesday morning. There are rumors floating around about the announcement, but there is nothing to confirm as of yet.

After his remarks, Flint's bosses, Ericsson President and CEO Carl-Henric Svanberg and Sony Chairman & CEO Sir Howard Stringer, joined him on stage. The three executives fielded questions on a host of topics from, you guessed it, the iPhone to mobile VoIP to GPS. The executives offered no firm answers, but Flint said he welcomed the challenge from Apple and remained confident that his company was prepared to meet it.