Orange goes alone on Xperia Play

Sony Ericsson’s long-awaited Xperia Play finally launches in the UK tomorrow – but only one of the four major mobile operators will be stocking it.

This morning Vodafone confirmed that stock problems meant that it would not be able to offer the handset as planned tomorrow morning. O2 had confirmed the same last week, though it blamed unspecific software bugs for the decision.

We can confirm that Orange will be offering the Xperia Play from tomorrow,” a spokesperson for Everything Everywhere, the company born last year out of the merger of Orange and T-Mobile, told VG247.

Rival network 3 has also confirmed to the site that it has delayed the launch until next week because of stock problems.

Sony Ericsson this morning confirmed that tomorrow remained the target launch date, though it did admit that it had "experienced a freight issue that may impact the number of Xperia Plays arriving at some retail outlets".