Sony Ericsson PlayNow Android Apps

Another day, another application store. If you’re a developer and you want your wonderful Android Application or Game to be distributed on the Xperia X10 when it comes out in the next few months, time to get moving! Sony Ericsson just announced that you can now submit apps and games to their one-stop content store – PlayNow.

Does this excite you? It does pretty much the opposite to me, because it ensures another level of irritating fragmentation that I wish didn’t exist. I can understand why a company would want to create a competing application store on their OWN platform but what’s the point in making your own App Store for Android when Android Market already exists? They’re obviously trying to differentiate but in my opinion this is counterproductive unless somehow they can work out exclusive deals for apps/games that wouldn’t also be found in Android Market – doubtful.

If you’re a developer you should definitely submit your applications to PlayNow, there isn’t a reason NOT to, its just one more step that none of us should have to take. A nice potential perk is that SE is featuring interesting applications on their YouTube channel such as Layar. Make something cool enough and you could be featured:

PlayNow is an existing Sony Ericsson service with over 70 million users so it will be interesting to see how they incorporate the Android aspect of the store:

PlayNow™ offers a complete multimedia experience. Consumers can access a full range of free and premium content via their mobile phone (over-the-air) or computer (www.sonyericsson.com/playnow) including applications, games, ringtones, themes, wallpapers, movies, full-track DRM-free music and TrackID™ charts. PlayNow™ features games and applications in the main menu, making it easy for consumers to find and buy your content.

[Sony Ericsson via AAM]

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