Japanese-Swedish phone maker Sony Ericsson will pack its future handsets with the Flexion technology from Accumulate UK, according to a global licensing deal the two companies signed and announced recently. According to Accumulate UK, Sony Ericsson becomes this way the first handset vendor around the world to include mobile games with Flexion on new mobile phones, based on the success Hutchison 3G UK has had.

As many of you might already know, it was only recently that mobile phones started to come to the market with pre-loaded games. Games are now seen as a necessary component of any mobile phone, yet they were only considered a means of cheering oneself up before. Full versions of games were present on handsets previously only after phone makers paid publishers license fees for them.

However, Accumulate UK’s Flexion technology is meant to transform the costs handset makers register for having full game versions pre-loaded on their devices into a revenue stream. What it is meant to do is to make users curious about the content on their devices and allow them to try out games before they purchase them, while also offering them ‘rent for the day’ or ‘have-a-go for 25p’ options, the company states.

“We are delighted that Sony Ericsson has taken this step together with us. We have been preloading Flexion enabled games with operators for a while now with very good results. With the help of Sony Ericsson we will extend our reach significantly,” Accumulate’s MD Jens Lauritzson commented on the agreement between the two companies.

The Flexion technology has been also designed so as to promote games similar to the ones pre-loaded on the handset, something that should end up in new trials and sales. According to Accumulate, this move is called ‘on-device retailing.’ The technology is to be included first on Sony Ericsson’s Yari device, due for release before the end of the year.

As many of you will know, the Xperia X2 is the successor to Sony Ericsson’s X1 and offers a 3.2-inch display, as well as QWERTY keyboard, a panel-based interface, an 8-megapixel camera and will offer Windows Mobile 6.5.

The LG GM750, LG’s first Windows Mobile 6.5 device, has a 3-inch touchscreen, supports Wi-Fi, HSDPA, GPS and will sync with your calendars and e-mail accounts. There’s also a 5-megapixel camera on the back.

The 3G Nokia E72, the successor to the E71 gets a full QWERTY keyboard, inbuilt GPS and 5-megapixel camera and will be exclusive to Vodafone in black.

Pricing is not yet confirmed for any of the devices, but those interested can pre-register on Vodafone’s online shop.

The app store, called PlayNow arena, follows the latest trend on the market, which drove a wide range of mobile phone makers, carriers and other companies towards launching their own branded application portals online. Although it might sound hilarious, the launch of Sony Ericsson’s software portal is the piece of information that matters the most, for other details are not as important as one might think. To be more precise, the storefront seems to have only 15 applications available for download/purchase at the moment, out of which only 2 are free, while the rest cost $6.50 (GBP 4.00). That is the UK store we are talking about.

Even so, the PlayNow arena includes 6 different sections, namely Music, Applications, Games, Themes, Wallpapers and Ringtones. The Games section, we must admit, comes with a few more items, which is rather great for users, although only three of them seem to be available for a free download. The rest of the titles available will run for the same $6.50 (GBP 4.00) as the applications. For what it’s worth, even this small number of items available on the portal seems to be a good start, at least as long as more applications and games will be added in the future, for these are the solutions that users are interested in the most.

Although some of the news reports on PlayNow arena’s launch seem to be rather harsh, we should take a look at a few of the stores already available online, and which managed to attract a lot of users on their side. Palm’s App Catalog, for example, was launched with only a handful of applications, 18 if we’re not mistaken, and still managed to reach 1 million downloads in about three weeks. Even if the offer on Sony Ericsson’s portal might seem limited, enthusiasts will certainly be attracted to the store, and it might prove successful in the end. You can take a look at the store here.

How ever the game is available for those who live in Denmark, Norway and Sweden. Although other countries will be launched aswell. There are Four language’s present which are English,Danish,Norweigen and swedish, so come on and enjoy the New Game of football by sony ericsson. And Enjoy, Btw this game is addictive. I also love the sound effect’s and you need to registeer aswell. Its  AMAZING:D.

The website to the game is: http://www.sekickoff.com/

Also if you would like to check more information out the sony ericsson insider’s webiste you can, how ever its only in swedish im afraid, the UK or other countries except Denmark,Norway and Sweden are able to see information about Sony Ericsson’s Kickoff.

The website as follows : http://www.sonyericsson.com/retail/index.aspx?locale=se-sv

The offical launch of this campaignto the public and will be on the 12th of August.

Stay Tuned for more information.

Companies including Apple, Nokia and Sony Ericsson yesterday promised to start offering phones that fit a universal charger from next year.

The move comes in response to anger from consumers who are landed with chargers with different connections for each phone bought.

Say goodbye to all these phone chargers. Mobile companies have agreed to go universal.

Most are thrown away, creating unnecessary cost and waste. There are more than 30 different chargers in circulation in member states of the European Union, which estimates that 51,000 are lying unused.

The other seven companies to sign the deal are Motorola, LG, NEC, Samsung, Texas Instruments, Qualcomm and the BlackBerry maker Research in Motion.
The first generation of phones that use the same Micro-USB connection will go on sale from next year.

The move comes against a background of legal threats from the European Commission. EU Industry commissioner Gunter Verheugen said: ‘I am very pleased the industry has found an agreement, which will make life much simpler for consumers.
‘They will be able to charge mobile phones anywhere from the new common charger.
‘This also means considerably less electronic waste because people will no longer have to throw away chargers when buying new phones.’

Pledge: The move, which will see mobile phone makers offer a universal charger, was announced by European Commission Vice President Guenter Verheugen

MEP Malcolm Harbour, the Conservative consumer spokesman, said: ‘The days of drawers full of useless old mobile phone chargers will soon be over. Common sense has prevailed.

‘This is a simple agreement that will have an extremely positive impact on users’ lives. We will no longer have to worry about forgetting our chargers and having to ask around to find one.

‘This agreement will also encourage more chargers to be recycled, preventing electronic waste.

‘Mobile phone companies should consider whether a new charger is now needed with every handset if there is a possibility that an old one can be recycled.

‘It is particularly welcome the commission was able to reach agreement with the industry, without new regulation.’

Users of Sony Ericsson’s Aino are allowed to control PlayStation 3 and access its media content. For TV lovers in Italy, France, Spain, Germany and in the UK, users can also enjoy the PlayTV service on Playstation 3 via the Aino, according to the company.

Aino also introduces Media Home, an application that pulls media content from Media Go on user’s PC over Wi-Fi to the phone automatically, the company said.

The Aino includes a three-inch 16 million-color screen, 8.1-megapixel camera, A-GPS and Bluetooth, and a keypad combined with an intuitive touch UI in media mode, the vendor highlighted.

GetJar develops free apps for a number of mobile platforms and regularly racks up over 14 million downloads per month. Popular downloads include Facebook Mobile, Google Maps featuring Latitude, eBuddy and Nimbuzz.

The apps available are all tailored for a multitude of operating systems, so whether your handset is running on Windows Mobile, Symbian, or Sony Ericsson’s proprietary OS, you’ll be able to get involved.

Sony Ericsson is now the latest of the major mobile manufacturers to announce its own online content store to compete with the growing dominance of Apple’s iPhone App Store. Samsung made a similar move recently launching Samsung Movies, a high definition movie download offering in March, and RIM launched BlackBerry App World on the 1st of April.

In addition to Samsung and RIM’s launches, Nokia finally took the wraps off of its Ovi Store last month, but was plagued with initial teething problems. The Ovi Store had some 20,000 apps available to download from day one, whereas PlayNow Arena will have more than twice that amount. Whether this puts PlayNow Arena on a more equal footing with the iPhone App Store, which as of the last official count, has over 35,000 available apps remains to be seen.

No launch date for when the 45,000 apps will be made available has been released by Sony Ericsson, although it is inviting developer submissions for PlayNow Arena from the 1st of July onwards.