Sony Ericsson today announced the imminent addition of applications to its mobile content service, PlayNow™ arena. This is the next expansion of the PlayNow content and service platform, following the announcement of PlayNow™ arena Movies on May 28. Today’s announcement puts PlayNow™ arena in a unique position, offering consumers a fully integrated content marketplace for their Sony Ericsson phones and giving third-party developers access to an established mobile content market channel for their content.

Applications will be offered in the 13 countries that currently support PlayNow™ arena. The service platform, which is compatible with 38 Sony Ericsson phone models, will roll out to further markets and models over the year.

“Sony Ericsson is delighted to introduce applications as the latest evolution of PlayNow™ arena, offering an established market place to our developer and partner community,” said Björn Ahlberg, Head of Content & Services at Sony Ericsson. “By bringing high-quality applications into PlayNow™ arena, consumers are only one click away from the world-wide creativity of innovative application developers.”

Featuring the hottest music, ring tones, games, themes, wall papers, movies and now applications, the PlayNow™ arena builds on Sony Ericsson’s long experience of selling mobile applications and content through Fun & Downloads, the Sony Ericsson online content service established in 2003 and available in 69 countries. Over the years, mobile consumers have embraced the freedom to play, discover and download the latest content resulting in over 150 Million downloads last year (2008). Fun & Downloads will continue to offer premium and free content to Sony Ericsson consumers while PlayNow™ arena is being rolled out to additional markets. Both content services offer well-established billing solutions including SMS transactions, credit card usage and operator billing.

The Sony Ericsson PlayNow™ arena application catalogue will primarily focus on high quality applications, providing the best possible user experience on Sony Ericsson mobile phones. To ensure a wide application offering, Sony Ericsson will collaborate with GetJar and provide a one-click access from PlayNow™ arena to their extensive market channel.

Application submission to Sony Ericsson – new web site opens July 1st

Sony Ericsson also announced it will start accepting application submissions as of July 1st, allowing developers to submit high-quality mobile applications to the PlayNow™ arena as well as to the established online application service, Fun & Downloads. There will be no fees for either service.

The submission process requires little effort and offers a quick time-to-market. Initially, it will be open for Java™ ME and Symbian OS applications and later this year will expand to cover additional platforms.

“We recognise that it needs to be simple and attractive for developers to reach consumers and that there need to be established content channels to push creative applications. Our new application submission process gives developers easy-to-use access to the Sony Ericsson PlayNow™ arena market place. ” said Christopher David, Head of Developer and Partner Engagement at Sony Ericsson