When Nokia began talking about building web service for mobile devices as a new business focus, it got credibility primarily because it has an almost 40% global handset market share ‘ not because it has ever shown itself to be strong at running a web business. It may have made great R&D strides to making the internet appear convincing on a handset, but none of its devices has the clarity and screen quality of say a Sony PlayStation Portable.
Which is perhaps why when we hear an echo of that strategy this week, from rising handset star Sony Ericsson, saying that it will turn the next generation of its PlayNow service, called PlayNow arena, into something approaching Nokia’s Ovi, it has a tone of believability about it.
There is only one thing holding us back from applauding the effort wholeheartedly and that is the disastrous history that Sony has had in running services ‘ as evidences by its now canned Connect music store and the slow emergence of the PS3 network and store compared to rival Microsoft.
But we must remember that this is Sony Ericsson, not Sony, and in that sense it may get the best of both worlds ‘ access to the incredible technology that Sony has so balefully mismanaged over the past four years, along with the resilient Walkman brand, while Sony Ericsson has shown itself to be largely immune to the mismanagement that has dogged Sony itself.
Sony Ericsson also has leverage in the music world through Sony-BMG, the film world through Sony Picture Entertainment and the games world through Sony PlayStation ‘ and that leverage doesn’t only extend to Sony properties. Sony BMG has the trust of rivals Universal Music, EMI and Warner (unlike Nokia ‘ see separate piece on Warner Music Nokia dispute) and Sony Pictures has partnerships across all the major studios, while in games it still has global ascendancy despite losing some element of leadership over the botched and delayed PS3. Sony Ericsson is becoming the default holder of the Walkman and Cybershot brands which belong to Sony, since the eventual destination of those features is surely on a handset.
So PlayNow will move from what it was launched as in 2004, a ringtone sampling and downloading site, which has grown to have a level of games, full music tracks, themes and wallpapers, to a full portal which will work with both the phone and the PC, just like Nokia Ovi. So far downloads have reached 200 million, but should accelerate once the new sites begin to be launched across the world in Q2 2008 and will include new ways of location discovery and acquiring content.
Sony Ericsson already offers TrackID which has 125,000 hits a day identifying tracks that are played around the mobile phone owner, and offering them as a purchase, and this will be integrated into the PlayNow arena and include hit charts of the songs that consumers have acquired in this way, both globally and in local markets.
Sony Ericsson insists that PlayNow will be open and will offer hundreds of games from leading publishers, millions of music tracks and thousands of mastertones from both major and independent labels, either DRM free or protected by Windows Media DRM. Sony Ericsson expects to have 5 million tracks on the system sometime during 2008.
PlayNow seems to be slightly different from the Nokia Ovi in that it generates revenue in collaboration with operators. PlayNow already has 100 joint billing and revenue sharing agreements, not something that Nokia considered necessary.
The company also talked about availability for new handsets this week including the touch screen W960 Walkman, a direct answer to the iPhone, except that it works with UMTS and Wi-Fi, which will be out in time for Christmas. The W960 was first shown in June 2007 and has room for 8,000 songs, a 2.6 inch display and a 3.2 megapixel camera. Also the new Walkman W890 and W380 phones have been added to the range and the new Sony Ericsson K660 (pictured) featuring landscape Web browsing and illuminated shortcut keys that only become active when surfing the Net. The device has been web optimized the company says for use with HSDPA and Google Maps and has a 2 megapixel camera.
All that Sony Ericsson now needs to bring to the party is a Sony PlayStation branded phone that plays PlayStation games, and add those to the portal, to turn the mobile web services heat up on Apple, Microsoft, Google and Nokia.