Sony Ericsson adds 5 Million songs to its upgraded PlayNow store

Sony Ericsson, the fourth largest mobile phone manufacturer in the world after Nokia, Motorola and Samsung, announced Sunday that it will add more than five million music tracks to its PlayNow Internet and mobile phone service, ahead of the release of its popular over-the-air (OTA) download store in May.

For the purpose, the joint venture between Sony and Ericsson of Sweden announced deals with 10 major record labels at the MIDEM, the international music trade show in Cannes, France, including Sony BMG, Warner Music Group Corp., EMI, The Orchard, IODA, The PocketGroup, Hungama, X5 Music, Bonnier Amigo and VidZone.

Speaking at MIDEM, Sony Ericsson's Executive Vice President, Anders Runevad said, “We are delighted to announce deals with such high calibre record labels. This will help realize our vision for PlayNow arena as a service that will be developed in collaboration with our partners.”

“Our commitment is to work with the industry to ensure we are building an experience-based and intuitive content delivery platform, enabling the development of an ecosystem that provides a unique experience for the consumer and a business model where everybody prospers," he continued.

The upgraded PlayNow online store would be available in 30 countries worldwide by the end of 2008, starting from May. Once it hits the market, it would face competition from Apple Inc.'s iTunes and Nokia Corp.'s Ovi portals.

Apple’s music store features the world's largest catalog with more than six million songs, 350 television shows and over 400 movies. The iTunes Store has sold 100 million TV shows and over 2 million movies, making it the world's most popular online music, TV and movie store. The iPod/Mac maker's iTunes Music store boasts of more than 70 percent of digital music sales in the United States. To date, Apple has sold over 4 billion songs via its online music store.

And, the largest mobile phones maker Nokia’s Ovi (which means "the door" in Finnish) music catalogue has three million songs, as well as strong distribution networks in most nations.

Sony Ericsson has also announced that it will add 250 new mobile phone videogames to the upgraded PlayNow service, through existing deals with leading games manufactures such as EA Games, Gameloft, THQ, Glu, Digital Chocolate and I-Play, in a significant move that would likely strengthen its numero uno position in the mobile games market.

The company will make the service available for consumers in Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Finland in May 2008, with more European markets by the end of June.

Sony Ericsson is a joint venture between the Japanese consumer electronics company Sony Corporation and the Swedish telecommunications company Ericsson established in 2001 to make mobile phones, with a full product portfolio covering all target groups.

After establishing the joint venture, the Stockholm-based LM Ericsson and Japan's Sony Corp. have ceased making their own mobile phones.