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The P800 is due to hit the market before Christmas and in the run up to the launch, London-based Sony Ericsson is asking developers to help it create applications for the firm's latest handset, in a contest dubbed the "Application Proclamation." The company said on Monday that 50 of the top applications submitted in the contest will be promoted by the firm during the Sony Ericsson P800 Smartphone launch campaign. These same applications will be featured on Handango, the on-line marketplace for wireless applications, where they can be downloaded by users, Sony Ericsson said.
Winners will receive a free Sony Ericsson P800, a set of Metrowerks CodeWarrior development tools, registration of their applications with the Sony Ericsson Developer World program and also "exposure and real opportunity," the mobile phone maker claimed. Users can register to enter the contest on Sony Ericsson's Web site, and submissions will be accepted until 31 October.
"The idea is to demonstrate how Sony Ericsson, through our Developer World program, can help developers through the entire process of taking an application to market. We can provide developers everything they need to be successful: tools, training, and a path to profit," said Rikko Sakaguchi, head of corporate function application and content development at Sony Ericsson. "We're challenging developers to step up and create the coolest and most original applications for the P800 Smartphone, and we show them how to turn their code into cash."
The P800 will in fact be Sony Ericsson's bid to steal market share away from Nokia's similarly featured 7650. The new Sony Ericsson device is based on the Symbian operating system and comes equipped with Personal Java and Java MIDP support. It is also endowed with Advanced MMS capabilities and carries WAP 2.0 as well as a HTML-capable browser.
In terms of hardware, the new Japanese/Swedish-made phone has a colour touch-screen, a digital camera and GPRS connectivity with tri-band GSM functionality for voice functions. The unit is also expected to have Bluetooth functionality, which should make it easy to synchronise its Powerpoint, Word or Excel software packages with corresponding PC programmes.
The new handset, as well others launched by the company in the past 11 months, are all part of Sony Ericsson's long-term objective to take market share away from market-leader Nokia. But with its market share dropping from 6.5 percent globally in the first quarter 2002 to 5.5 percent in the second quarter, Sony Ericsson has a way to go before it can best Nokia's almost 40 percent market share.
Monday's announcement by Sony Ericsson also reflects a larger trend that has dogged the mobile industry for years: a lack of applications. Such was the complaint with WAP1.0 and early adopters of GPRS. Users of these technologies found that despite the ability of phones to download tools and information, there were few compelling applications to captivate the mobile community at large.
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