June 3 - 1:50pm EDT   Sony Ericsson at mid-day said it would jump into the mobile app store field by bringing apps to its PlayNow service. Similar to the iPhone's App Store and other services, developers will have to submit apps to Sony Ericsson but can optionally put their apps in a central portal across all 13 countries PlayNow serves. Developers won't be locked into a single operating system, however, and the company plans to offer both Symbian apps for its upcoming phones and Java ME for more limited phones. [full story]

May 29 - 4:40pm EDT   Sony Ericsson on Thursday announced the launch of its PlayNow movie delivery service. Bundled with certain handsets, PlayNow will let users watch up to 60 full-length movies per year on their cell phones. There will be 15 titles to choose from in a given month, and Sony Ericsson will replace four titles each and every month. Movies downloaded to a PC and then transferred to a handset can be watched as many times as users wish within a 90-day period. [full story]

September 24 - 9:15am EDT   Sony Ericsson this morning launched into more aggressive competition in mobile music with the advent of PlayNow plus. The feature is one of the few carrier-independent unlimited music services that works entirely from the device itself but is also tailored to overcome resistance to subscription services: in an improvement on Nokia's Comes With Music service, Sony Ericsson says it will not only let users keep their most frequently-played music at the end of their subscriptions but that permanent copies will come in MP3 format; listeners can offload the music to another phone, a PC, or a dedicated media player without copy restrictions. [full story]

January 28 - 9:40am EST   Sony-Ericsson this morning revealed an aggressive step into online music with expanded plans for its upcoming PlayNow arena music service. The cellphone producer says it has now struck deals to offer downloadable full tracks from major labels EMI, Warner Music, and its sibling Sony BMG as well as larger independents such as The Orchard and X5. This will add up to more than five million songs available for owners of Sony-Ericsson handsets, the company says. No details have been given as to whether the catalog will extend to the ordinary PlayNow service already available today, which sells some full music as well as ringtones. [full story]