Sony Ericsson Adds Apps To PlayNow; Partners With GetJar To Beef Up Catalog By About 45,000

trending topics

Register now

Our next conference: paidContent 2012, March 1 in NYC.

Sony Ericsson Adds Apps To PlayNow; Partners With GetJar To Beef Up Catalog By About 45,000

Comments (View)
Text Size: A A
Email
Share

Sony (NYSE: SNE) Ericsson (NSDQ: ERIC), the fifth-largest mobile-phone maker in the world, is revealing its plans today for a mobile application store and says it will be outsourcing much of the work to GetJar, an independent Lithuania-based company.

While it’s early days for most mobile app stores, Sony Ericsson is the first major handset maker to look for help in managing and stocking what can otherwise be an unwieldy and massive digital warehouse. So far, many of the major handset makers, including Apple (NSDQ: AAPL), Nokia (NYSE: NOK), BlackBerry and Google (NSDQ: GOOG), have chosen to manage stores on their own, which means everything from sourcing the content to testing and approving it. The joint announcement is being made today at the JavaOne conference in San Francisco, however, mocoNews was able to talk to Ullrika Svenburg, Sony Ericsson’s Head of Content and Services Communications, and Chris Dury, GetJar’s vp of product, in advance.

As expected, Sony Ericsson said the new app store will be accessed from its PlayNow Arena content platform that launched ten months ago. PlayNow offers everything from wallpapers to full-track music downloads and a just-announced movie rental service. Sony Ericsson will focus on sourcing premium branded content for the PlayNow store, while linking to GetJar, so customers will have access to what Dury refers to “as the long-tail of applications,” including 45,000 applications. GetJar will also provide back-end technology to Sony Ericsson to help manage the application process for developers. Svenburg: “We’ve had an application store for a long time, but we haven’t been marketing it as we could of or should of and we think it’s about time to bring to the forefront of all of the content we are providing. Getjar has been very instrumental in helping us get the submission process and infrastructure and backbone of taking care of all the apps.”

More details after the jump…

How many apps: While GetJar has more than 45,000 applications in its catalog, and assists more than 1 million downloads a day, not all applications will necessarily work on all phones. Dury said typically between 1,000 and 8,000 will be compatible. “I think the interesting part of this announcement—for the industry and particularly for GetJar, is that people often ask ‘how do all the app stores co-exist?’ This is an example of how we prefer to work with OEMs. Many OEMs are focused on the top tier—they want to bring Facebook, and other common experiences to the mobile phone, but they aren’t equipped to deal with 40,000 apps, and they don’t have the staffing or the business model to make the money over the long tail of apps. This is the first example of a branded OEM app store that is working with the long tail, and have not had to create giant developer programs of their own.”

Business model: Sony Ericsson would not provide a lot of details about the storefront, including how it will split revenues with developers. (More details coming soon at sonyericsson.com/developer). Svenburg said the store will launch imminently and at launch, they will have three billing options at launch, including premium SMS, credit cards and operator billing, but whether all of those are available, will depend on each country. GetJar’s catalog of apps are all free. At this point, GetJar makes money from developers, who pay to be featured on the site. Dury said it will have to share that revenue with Sony Ericsson. GetJar has signed a three-year deal with Sony Ericsson.

PlayNow Arena: Svenburg said PlayNow is now in 13 countries, while the Fun and Downloads store is in 69. The Fun and Downloads store will stick around until the roll-out is complete.

Related Stories

By Tricia Duryee