Sony Ericsson announced on Wednesday that it would soon add applications to PlayNow arena, its mobile content service. The addition of applications comes after the announcement of PlayNow arena Movies and marks another step in the expansion of the content and service platform. The PlayNow arena will be able to offer Sony Ericsson mobile phone users a fully integrated content marketplace for their handsets, while also giving third-party developers the possibility to make their content available through an established channel.

The PlayNow arena is available in 13 countries, and the Swedish-Japanese joint venture announced that the applications would become available in all of them. In addition, the company says, the service platform is now compatible with 38 Sony Ericsson phone models, and will come to more countries and more handsets during the ongoing year. At the beginning, developers will be able to submit apps for Java ME and Symbian OS, yet the portal will expand to cover more platforms later this year.

“Sony Ericsson is delighted to introduce applications as the latest evolution of PlayNow arena, offering an established market place to our developer and partner community,” said Bjorn Ahlberg, head of Content & Services at Sony Ericsson. “By bringing high-quality applications into PlayNow arena, consumers are only one click away from the world-wide creativity of innovative application developers.”

The app submissions for the Sony Ericsson PlayNow arena application catalogue will start on July 1, enabling the addition of high-quality mobile apps from third-party developers. Devs will also be able to submit apps to the Fun & Downloads service, without having to pay any fees for either service. At the same time, the submission process is simple and offers a quick time-to-market.

“We recognise that it needs to be simple and attractive for developers to reach consumers and that there is a need for established content channels to push creative applications. Our new application submission process gives developers easy-to-use access to the Sony Ericsson PlayNow arena market place,” said Christopher David, head of Developer and Partner Engagement at Sony Ericsson.

Starting July 1, developers will be able to submit apps through the new Sony Ericsson application submission site. More information can be found on the PlayNow arena and Fun & Downloads.