Despite the imminent release of the excellent sounding 8 megapixel wonder C905 handset, the similarly impressive W902 Walkman phone and the promise of the flashy looking Xperia X1 before the end of the year, Sony Ericsson has been a bit down in the dumps lately.
That’s mainly been due to some less than impressive financial results, but perhaps a new, all-you-can-eat music service will help perk up the company’s fortunes. Hot on the heals of Nokia’s Comes With Music service, it seems Sony Ericsson would do well to plan its own subscription based music service and according to a Financial Times report, the company is already in talks with all major music labels about doing just that.
Continue reading ‘Sony Ericsson planning rival to Nokia’s Comes With Music service?’
German firm Mobivention has been making interesting Flash Lite content for a while now, including animated wallpapers, and ones that change image according to the time of the day. However, it’s new thing is called Shaking Wallpaper, and is a set of wallpapers that you change by shaking your mobile.
Okay, it’s not the “revolution for users to individualise their mobile phone on the go” that Mobivention claims - it’s more a novel use for your phone’s accelerometer function that you’ll probably tire off after a few minutes. The Shaking Wallpaper currently works on Sony Ericsson phones, and they’re on sale through the handset maker’s new PlayNow Arena portal.
However, Mobivention says it’ll be launching new Flash Lite stuff in the coming months. Personally, I’m less interested in shaking my wallpapers, and more interested in making them more interactive - for example pulling in news headlines from the web, or friend’s Twitter posts. Fingers crossed that Mobivention (and other companies) go down this road with Flash Lite.
As part of its big announcement this week, which saw three new handsets unveiled, Sony Ericsson also revealed its plans for PlayNow.
PlayNow was originally an easy way to pre-listen to and then buy polyphonic ringtones from your Walkman handset. Since its launch in 2004 it’s been expanded to include mastertones (MP3 ringtones), games, full music tracks and other content.
Now Sony Ericsson’s said what it’ll do next: PlayNow Arena. From next year, PlayNow will a lot more advanced. In the Arena, users will still listen to and buy tracks and ringtones, but they’ll also be linked to Sony Ericsson’s TrackID, track identification service (kind of like Shazam).
You’ll be able to identify tracks with TrackID, then click to PlayNow to buy said tracks. PlayNow Arena will also feature TrackID charts, where the most searched-for tracks around the world will be listed. Mobile games will also be included in PlayNow, with a more open environment for trying and buying mobile games straight from your Sony Ericsson handset.
This isn’t all - customers will also be able to access PlayNow Arena from either both mobiles and PCs enabling OTA downloads to both, just like operators offer now with their music download services.
And that still isn’t all, because Sony Ericsson’s coup de grace is that the music tracks will be DRM-free. That’s right, there’ll be no limit on downloads or on what device the tracks are downloaded to. Blimey.
