Sony Ericsson announced that it has signed an exclusive sponsorship agreement with Maria Sharapova, the famous 20 years old female tennis player, to become the first global brand ambassador for the company.

The four years agreement will permit the young Russian star and Sony Ericsson to work together on a series of new and innovative consumer brand campaigns created to engage the mobile company's core target audiences. Also, Maria Sharapova will work with Sony Ericsson's design team to design a range of new products and accessories.

"Now in our seventh year as a company, the brand has evolved significantly and securing a global brand ambassador is a natural progression to take our brand to the next level in an increasingly competitive market place" said Dee Dutta, Corporate Vice President and Head of Marketing at Sony Ericsson. "Maria's iconic status, determination, dynamism, success and charm match strongly with the Sony Ericsson brand, which prides itself on innovative and cool design with substance. Our alignment with Maria's global iconic status, combined with our brand expertise and innovative thinking aims to provide something new and something different to our customers around the world."

"It is really exciting to be working with a cool brand like Sony Ericsson which has such a strong reputation in the entertainment industry," Maria Sharapova said. "Even though most people know me as a tennis player, I have so many passions beyond the sport like fashion, music, film and design; which Sony Ericsson and I are going to be exploring together through our partnership."

Besides the announced deal with Sony Ericsson, Maria Sharapova has other endorsement deals too, with important companies like Canon, Nike and Land Rover. Her image was also used by Motorola to promote two of their special edition phones in 2005 and 2006. Well, in 2008, things have changed and I guess the pretty Maria will be using only Sony Ericsson phones for the next four years.