Sony Ericsson's PlayNow Arena: 1 million, DRM-free songs on Monday

What was just a footnote to 2007 has finally come to fruition. Sony Ericsson just went live with details on the August 25th launch of its PlayNow Arena media download site. Initially the site will offer 1 million, DRM-free songs (ramping up to 5 million) from Sony BMG, Warner Music, and EMI. It will also offer games, ringtones, applications, and themes for your mobile downloading pleasures. Other European countries will come on board later this year before it goes global in 2009. Tracks are expected to be "on par" with Apple's iTunes ($0.99 / €0.99) pricing but will cost SEK9 (about $1.43, credit card required) for the Nordic launch. Full press release after the break.

STOCKHOLM (Dow Jones)--Sony Ericsson Friday announced the launch of PlayNow Arena, an Internet site that gives users access to mobile music, games, and applications.

The phonemaker's attempt at increasing its exposure to the lucrative mobile music and gaming market is seen a key step for the company that made its mark in regions such as Western Europe with its music-focused sub-brand Walkman phones and camera-focuses Cybershot handsets.

The service will first be rolled out in the Nordic countries on Monday morning, and will initially include one million tracks from the largest global music labels, including Sony BMG, Warner Music, and EMI.

All tracks will be DRM free, or without digital rights management, meaning users can move the files around between devices and convert them an unlimited number of times.

The site will expand to other European countries later this year and be global in 2009, ultimately selling five million tracks.

Martin Blomkvist, Sony Ericsson's head of content acquisition and management said in a recent interview that offering digital music without rights or copying restrictions and games will help pull users toward the new site, providing a larger separate revenue stream, and stimulate handset sales.

"If we together don't work for finding ways to take away the obstacles of legal downloads, then, this industry from a digital perspective is going to die," Blomkvist told Dow Jones Newswires in an interview Wednesday.

Sony Ericsson, the joint venture between Sweden's Telefon AB L.M. Ericsson (ERIC) and Japan's Sony Corp. (SNE), has some 200 million handsets capable of playing mp3 music files in the market already.

All tracks sold in Sweden will cost SEK9 with credit card, and others are expected to cost on par with what rival Apple Inc.'s (AAPL) charges for a song track on its iTunes site, such as $0.99 in the U.S. and EUR0.99 in Europe.

Research firm Gartner expects the global mobile music industry to be worth $13.11 billion in 2011, far above the $4.43 billion in 2008. The gaming industry is expected to grow to $6.31 billion from $4.51 billion during that time.

CCS Insight analyst Paolo Pescatore said offering DRM-free music is a clear differentiator, setting it apart from protected files sold by rivals Nokia (NOK) and Apple.

Still, Blomkvist said that even with reasonable buying terms with the biggest music labels, after paying taxes and operators for using their systems, Sony Ericsson would hardly profit from selling music.

"Had we only done music, we wouldn't have done this," he said. "The way it is set up today, very few people, apart from the record industry, are getting rich on digital music. Generally speaking, the music today isn't generating a boat load of cash for us."

He didn't give specifics, but said the margin on mobile games is much higher.

Phone sales globally are slowing, leading many phone makers to look for new ways to make money. To help cushion the slowdown, and have customers come back for upgrades, many device makers are diversifying into content and services, such as offering music, games, Internet access, and applications.

Apple's latest iPhone offers a full range of such services; Nokia's Ovi portal is the launch pad for its offerings, and BlackBerry maker Research In Motion (RIMM) has carved out a niche with e-mail, and is branching into multimedia.

"This is a good first step for Sony Ericsson, but, honestly, if this is a relaunch of PlayNow, I would have expected a bit more," said CCS Insight analyst Paolo Pescatore. "On the whole, it appears they are being conservative with a wait-and-see attitude toward the market.

Nokia 2680 slide garners FCC attention in AT&T trim

Who knew that AT&T's customer base constituted an "emerging market"? Certainly not us, but Nokia's 2680 slide -- a phone Nokia itself said was targeted at so-called "replacement buyers" in emerging markets -- has just been spotted all up in the FCC's business bearing an AT&T logo front and center (well, actually, it's toward the bottom, but you get our drift). It includes an FM radio, MP3 ringtone support, a low-end cam, and an unsubsidized price of €75 (about $114), so we suspect this'll likely find a home on GoPhone. If it does end up on the postpaid roster, though, expect it be about as close to free as they come.

MasterCard fires up mobile payment trial in Canada

Hey, here's an idea: let's trial phone-based NFC payment systems. Then, let's trial them again. Then let's trial them a few more times -- but let's not actually launch them on a wide scale so that they're usable, and let's certainly make sure they're not marketed heavily enough to garner widespread consumer interest. That seems to be the attitude financial institutions, manufacturers, and carriers are taking in North America, where countless tiny trials have popped up and died across the US over the past couple years; now, Canada gets in on the action thanks to MasterCard with an adaptation of its PayPass system. The trial, which only (and inexplicably) runs from now until November, loops in Bell Mobility will allow users to pay for $1.29 red blobs sold in sterile, all-blue convenience stores where ghastly silhouettes roam in the background simply by tapping their issued handsets against MasterCard's already installed PayPass terminals. Can we please just get a trial that turns into a commercial product this time, or is that too much to ask?

Norway shuns DVB-H for DMB, European mobile TV drama deepens

Granted, Norway isn't actually a member of the European Union, which makes it slightly less dramatic that they've rejected the Nokia-tested, EU-approved DVB-H standard in favor of DMB -- but it's still Europe, and this just adds to the ugly, fragmented picture that mobile TV is becoming around there. Germany has all but abandoned DVB-H to go with its free, designed-for-TV counterpart, DVB-T, and the UK has recently hooked up Qualcomm with spectrum for a MediaFLO network, so ubiquitous DVB-H is anything but a guarantee across the continent at this point. The current Norwegian plan calls for nine DMB channels to launch by winter, which may be viewed as a superior technology there because it's better able to cover rural areas in a cost-effective way than DVB-H is. Bottom line: if you'd dreamed of some day carrying a single device from country to country to catch all the spellbinding local TV programming, you might be out of luck for a while.

Orange paying actors to line up for the iPhone 3G in Poland

The iPhone 3G hits 20 more countries tomorrow, and while we doubt the hype will match the craziness of launch day, that's not stopping Orange from trying to re-create the madness in Poland -- it's hiring "dozens" of actors to line up at 20 stores around the country to "drum up interest." Yeah, that's just sad -- especially since there aren't any real customers in line at Polish T-Mobile stores, which is also carrying the phone. Good luck selling phones to your own actors, fools -- when will these companies ever learn?

Sprint drops Phone-as-Modem plan to $15 per month, adds stipulations

So there's good news and bad news, and we're not even giving you the option of choosing which you'd prefer to hear first (hint: it's the good). Sprint has dropped the price of its Phone-as-Modem plan (capped at 5GB monthly) to just $15 per month. Now, the rest of the story. First off, you must own a Power Vision phone with connection capabilities to a laptop. Next -- unlike the old PAM plan which ran $49.99 / month all by itself -- this "attachable plan" requires you to have another data plan already on your account. For instance, the BlackBerry Personal Pack ($30 / month) or the Worldwide Data Plan ($70 / month). In the end, it looks as if tethering in and of itself got cheaper, but those newfound strings that are reportedly attached will likely cause some frustration.

Apple taps MTS to bring iPhone 3G to Russia

Reuters reports that a "market source" has confirmed that Apple has finally sealed a deal to bring the iPhone 3G to Russia in an official capacity, launching on Mobile TeleSystems "likely" in Октябрь (October, that is). Neither MTS nor Apple would agree to comment on the situation -- no surprise there -- but seeing how Russia is one of the remaining gargantuan markets where the iPhone has yet to materialize, it seems like a no-brainer deal for all parties involved.