FIVE REASONS TO DEVELOP FOR SONY ERICSSON WALKMAN MOBILE PHONES

Five reasons to develop for Sony Ericsson Walkman mobile phones





Sony Ericsson's family of Walkman phones make mobile music application development a smash hit.

Within the last 18 months, the number of Walkman-branded phone models has grown from the groundbreaking W800 to ten phone model series. This phone family now covers different market segments, radio frequencies, design styles and features giving the end-user choice and the application and content developer great business opportunities.

With increasing 3G connection speeds and industry commentators such as Gartner and eMarketer predicting that mobile music will account for the rapidly increasing market of worldwide digital music sales, there is no better time to start creating applications that enable the end-user to discover and use music through their mobile phones.

Here are five reasons why developing for Sony Ericsson Walkman phones makes sound business sense.

1. Convergence in the gadget market

Ask yourself this question: what are the most important things you take with you when you leave home in the morning? Sony Ericsson did and our research showed that after keys and wallet, the mobile phone is the next most important item.

Compare the results in the graph above and see where the standalone digital music player is ranked. As end-users want access to digital entertainment on the move, building as much functionality as possible into the mobile phone is logical. A quality product offering combined with multiple features and useful applications will mean that end-users will only want one electronic device: the mobile phone.

2. Brand recognition

The Walkman brand is well established in the music business. Through the Sony history of providing cassettes, CDs, mini-discs and MP3 players, end-users associate "Walkman" with high-quality and innovative portable music players. Sony Ericsson built on this music tradition and designed a high quality digital media player for mobile phones and made a deal with Sony to brand it "Walkman", hence the Walkman range of mobile phones. This brand recognition has supported Sony Ericsson in establishing the mobile phone as a credible digital music player, with Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein Equity Research observing Sony Ericsson's market leading position in September 2005.

3. Broad product range with expanding market reach

Three million Sony Ericsson Walkman phones were shipped during 2005, with the world's first Walkman phone, the W800, distributed in 89 countries. Sony Ericsson sees this growth continuing and now offers 10 Walkman phone model series, covering a range of market segments, radio frequencies, design styles, JSRs, screen sizes and features. An overview grid of all 10 phones is presented at the end of this article.

Even though the Walkman portfolio is the main focus of Sony Ericsson's music activities, music solutions for our other series of mobile phones are just as relevant. Network limitations, product market reach, end-user choice and model-version exclusivity to certain operators mean that we need to make sure that the music experience is as good as possible across the entire product portfolio.

The music experience on the phone can be so much more than just playing music tracks. The Sony Ericsson phones offer functionality that expand and enrich the out-of-box experience for the end-user and increase operator traffic, giving developers scope to create innovative and exciting audio content.

Consider:

* Ringtones, mastertones, artist official album cover art, video clips, themes, wallpapers, FM and internet radio solutions, podcasts, audio books
* File management, HTML browsing, track download, video download, video streaming, XML parsing for database access, RSS feeds, Bluetooth connectivity, SVG-T
* Sound effects, samples, voice-overs, audio instructions

4. Painless porting between different phone series

Sony Ericsson facilitates porting of applications to many different phone series by continuing its successful Java Platform strategy. Through this approach, several phone models use the same Java ME platform version where JSR implementation and runtime behavior are consistent. As the Walkman family of mobile phones has grown over the last 18 months, the phones follow the backwards compatible Java Platform evolution with each new Java Platform adding to the previous list of JSRs. For example the W800 uses Java Platform 5 (JP-5), the W550, W700 and W810 are JP-6 and the W710 and W850 use JP-7. See the grid at the end of this article for more information.

The Java Platform strategy is supported by a consistent screen size approach, again helping developers to efficiently create applications for a range of phones at the same time. All the screen sizes for the Walkman mobile phones are in the overview grid below, and all mobile phones supported by Sony Ericsson Developer World are presented by screen size here>>

5. Dedicated developer support

Sony Ericsson Developer World stimulates audio- and music-related application ideas and has a dedicated music web resource at www.SonyEricsson.com/developer/music

So for developers, the aim is to make music-related applications as essential as themes, ringtones or games to the mobile content marketplace. Developers can use both Java ME and Symbian OS v9.1/UIQ 3 to imaginatively include music and audio in their applications or to create applications that enhance the mobile music experience.

The new Sony Ericsson Music and Video Developers' Guidelines covering media support, supported codecs, MIME types and streaming video is just one of the developer resources available. Read more>>

Other developer resources include:

* Phone specification white papers
* SDKs
* Themes Creator tool
* Music-related documents including DRM and Ringtones
* Java ME and Symbian OS discussion forums
* Audio-related tips and tricks articles with code samples
* Latest news articles

Check-out the music web section, including links to phone specifications>>

Overview of the technical features of the Walkman family of mobile phones