Sony Ericsson's family of Walkman® phones make mobile music application development a smash hit.

With increasing 3G connection speeds and industry commentators such as Gartner and eMarketer predicting that mobile music will account for the rapidly increasing market of worldwide digital music sales, there is no better time to start creating applications that enable the end-user to discover and use music through their mobile phones.

Here are five reasons why developing for Sony Ericsson Walkman phones makes sound business sense.

1. Convergence in the gadget market

2. Brand recognition

The Walkman brand is well established in the music business. Through the Sony history of providing cassettes, CDs, mini-discs and MP3 players, end-users associate "Walkman" with high-quality and innovative portable music players.

3. Broad product range with expanding market reach

Three million Sony Ericsson Walkman phones were shipped during 2005, with the world's first Walkman phone, the W800, distributed in 89 countries. Sony Ericsson sees this growth continuing and now offers 10 Walkman phone model series, covering a range of market segments, radio frequencies, design styles, JSRs, screen sizes and features.

4. Painless porting between different phone series

Sony Ericsson facilitates porting of applications to many different phone series by continuing its successful Java™ Platform strategy. Through this approach, several phone models use the same Java ME platform version where JSR implementation and runtime behavior are consistent.

5. Dedicated developer support

Sony Ericsson Developer World stimulates audio- and music-related application ideas and has a dedicated music web resource at www.SonyEricsson.com/developer/music

Get the complete story at http://developer.sonyericsson.com/site/global/newsandevents/latestnews/newsjune06/p_five_reasons_develop_sonyericsson_walkman_phones.jsp