MobiMate , one of the most well established mobile application software developers, publishing best selling titles such as WorldMate and DateMate , joined the Sony Ericsson Developer Program a few months ago. Both Sony Ericsson and MobiMate have benefited from this partnership, with MobiMate's first P800 application, WorldMate, becoming the best selling application on Sony Ericsson's new on-line application shop with over 5700 downloads in less than 6 weeks.

An early entrant to the mobile software arena, MobiMate is one of the world's leading developers of mobile, business-oriented application software. MobiMate's PDA and smartphone products such as WorldMate, DateMate and Contacts Pro have been among the chart-leaders on the PDA software platform for years. WorldMate in particular has gained a best-of-breed position in the travel software category, with features ranging from World clocks and map to on-line weather forecasts (in co-operation with The Weather Channel), on-line currency rates, currency and measurements conversion and more. MobiMate's proprietary mobile enterprise application technology has given birth to innovative and successful business systems in Mobile Banking, Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Supply Chain Management (SCM) and other fields.

"When we looked to the emerging Symbian OS smartphone market, Sony Ericsson's UIQ-based P800 was immediately recognized as the natural platform for WorldMate. Encapsulating powerful computing capabilities, GPRS communications and multimedia, we knew that we had a great platform to put a great software product on. Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications has proven to be a highly responsive and co-operative partner, with a good eye for both what should be done and how the application should be brought to market," states Nadav Gur, MobiMate's CEO.

"Sony Ericsson has through its on-line application shop provided a real platform to sell our application on, and the customer up-take has been unprecedented," continues Nadav Gur. "With additional go-to-market opportunities offered by Sony Ericsson, such as application CD's bundled with the P800, we believe we will be able to reach even more customers. Based on WorldMate's initial success, we are now working on additional products, as well as upgrades."

Sony Ericsson and MobiMate have signed a deal to distribute WorldMate as a trial version on the CD that comes with the P800. Through its Developer Program, Sony Ericsson has provided MobiMate with the latest development tools, technical documentation and professional development support that have speeded up the development of WorldMate for the P800.

Ramel Levin, MobiMate's director of Product Management, says: "We have received ample support from Sony Ericsson in bringing our product to market in record time. Development issues were quickly and efficiently solved resulting in optimizing the development phase of WorldMate for the P800."

Some of the technically related experiences MobiMate had when porting their application to the Sony Ericsson P800 can be found in an article by Wireless DevNet.

Sony Ericsson and MobiMate will in the next newsletter share some tips & tricks and code examples related to the development of the WorldMate application for the P800.

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