It has taken about 5 years for Sony to get the networking side of things together, and even longer to bring online stores to fruition ‘ and in that learning curve it missed out on a chance to compete with iTunes and gave Microsoft a huge lead on its gaming network. But it now plans to put those hard learned lessons to work by turning its mobile based PlayNow Arena into a fully fledged App Store.
It’s hardly a surprise – Nokia just got through merging all its web services efforts back into Ovi ‘ and PlayNow, to some extent is based on Ovi ‘ and it also means that Sony doesn’t have to re-invent another network, just simply apply the DRM and transaction formats of an existing network to a new content format.
The PlayNow arena jumped to include Movies at the end of May, now it will invite submissions from developers from July 1, to offer a mobile channel for their applications. Applications will be offered in the 13 countries that currently support PlayNow arena which can reach 38 Sony Ericsson phone models. It will roll out to further markets and models over the year. Earlier mobile content networks from Sony reached around 69 countries so we can expect Sony to expand to that kind of number eventually. Last year Sony had 150 million downloads, which may not compare with Apple’s App Store just yet, but a higher percentage of these would have been paid for than Apple. The extended PlayNow arena will offer billing solutions through SMS transactions, credit card usage and operator billing.
Sony also said it would extend its mobile Java Platform down onto its entry level 3G phones so that games, applications and content developed on the Sony Ericsson Java platform will make a compelling business opportunity for developers who can target smaller devices.
Sony says that its PlayNow arena application catalog will primarily focus on high quality applications, and said that it will collaborate with GetJar, a popular mobile application developer community, with over 200,000 developer and beta-test accounts.
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(TM) 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 recognize 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(TM) arena market place. ” said Christopher David, Head of Developer and Partner Engagement at Sony Ericsson