Sony Ericsson joins Eclipse as Add-in Provider Member

Stockholm, August 29, 2006 Sony Ericsson today announced that it is joining the Eclipse community as Add-in Provider Member. By becoming an Add-in Provider, Sony Ericsson aims to contribute to the Eclipse ecosystem through creating Eclipse plug-ins of benefit to the global mobile application developer community.

Eclipse is an open-source community bringing together a number of leading organizations to create the Eclipse Platform. The platform is designed for building applications, integrated development environments (IDEs) and various tools.

”We have received many requests from developers to support open-source initiatives. Eclipse is language independent allowing us to cater for both UIQ 3 and Java Platform, Micro Edition developers. Eclipse has an active community with strong support, and its plug-in architecture makes it possible for companies like Sony Ericsson to extend its use and help further develop and refine it for the benefit of the global developer community,” says Mikael Nerde, Head of Developer Program & Content Planning at Sony Ericsson.

The Eclipse Platform is turned into a Java IDE by adding Java development components and it is turned into a C/C++ IDE by adding C/C++ development components. It becomes both a Java and C/C++ development environment by adding both sets of components.

Sony Ericsson has already released a plug-in providing Eclipse IDE integration for the Sony Ericsson Java CDC Platform 1 supported by the P990 smartphone and M600 messaging device, as well as the Eclipse Device Explorer Plug-in which allows developers to remotely control the Java Application Manager on Sony Ericsson mass-market phones from within any Eclipse based IDE.

“Sony Ericsson is a well-respected player among Java ME and UIQ software developers, and we are looking forward to their contributions to the Eclipse open-source community. Joining the Eclipse Foundation is a significant undertaking for any company and we appreciate the opportunity to work with Sony Ericsson Developer World to extend the features and use of the Eclipse platform,” says Mike Milinkovich, Executive Director of the Eclipse Foundation.

By becoming an Eclipse Add-in Provider Member, Sony Ericsson is joining other industry leaders such as Ericsson, Redhat, SAS, JBoss, Oracle, Palmsource, Compuware, Hitachi and Fujitsu. Eclipse is used by a significant number of developers globally and by providing plug-ins for Java and C++ development, Sony Ericsson aims to facilitate a better development environment for both Java ME and Symbian OS UIQ developers.

Current and future Eclipse tools and plug-ins from Sony Ericsson are announced and made freely available to the global developer community by Sony Ericsson Developer World at www.sonyericsson.com/developer

About Sony Ericsson
Sony Ericsson Developer World is a global support program and web portal totally dedicated to helping serious, wireless developers achieve business success by providing the documentation, tools, training, technical and go-to-market support they need in their development process. Sony Ericsson Developer World helps developers get on the fast track from mind to market, thereby ensuring that a constant stream of fun, useful and innovative content and applications is available for Sony Ericsson phones. www.SonyEricsson.com/developer

Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications serves the global communications market with innovative and feature-rich mobile phones, accessories and PC cards. Established as a joint venture by Sony and Ericsson in 2001, with global corporate functions located in London, the company employs approximately 6,000 people worldwide, including R&D sites in Europe, Japan, China and America. Sony Ericsson celebrates the 5th anniversary of the start of the joint venture on 1st October, 2006.

Sony Ericsson is the global title sponsor of the Women’s Tennis Association, and works with the Association to promote the Sony Ericsson WTA Tour in over 80 cities during the year. The tour culminates at the Sony Ericsson Championships in Madrid, Spain, from 7 to 12 November. For more information on Sony Ericsson, please visit www.SonyEricsson.com

About the Eclipse Foundation
Eclipse is an open source community whose projects are focused on providing an extensible development platform and application frameworks for building software. Eclipse provides extensible tools and frameworks that span the software development lifecycle, including support for modeling, language development environments for Java, C/C++, PHP and others, testing and performance, business intelligence, rich client applications and embedded development. A large, vibrant ecosystem of major technology vendors, innovative start-ups, universities and research institutions and individuals extend, complement and support the Eclipse Platform.

The Eclipse Foundation is a not-for-profit, member supported corporation that hosts the Eclipse projects. Full details of Eclipse and the Eclipse Foundation are available at www.eclipse.org

Any product features, specifications or statements in this document that are not historical facts are forward-looking and involve risks and uncertainties. Actual product features, specifications or forward-looking statements are subject to change.

Sony Ericsson is the trademark or registered trademark of Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications AB. Sony is the trademark or registered trademark of Sony Corporation. Ericsson is the trademark or registered trademark of Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson. Java is a trademark or registered trademark of Sun Microsystems, Inc. Symbian, UIQ and all Symbian OS-based marks and logos are trademarks of Symbian Limited. All other trade names and trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

Contact Information

Sony Ericsson Corporate Communications

Sony Ericsson

Contact via E-mail