Sony Ericsson makes mobile content available from kiosks - easier than browsing the mobile web?

Sony Ericsson has expanded its PlayNow service to special kiosks in Asia. The downloadable music and content from the service will be available in-store at the kiosks at more than 80 Sony Ericsson stores throughout Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore during the first phase of the rollout.

How do the kiosks work?

After buying a Sony Ericsson smartcard, consumers connect their mobile phone to a download station. On touch-screen, they select the entertainment content they wish to download, and the items will be transferred directly to their handsets a few minutes later.

At launch, the PlayNow kiosks will feature full-length movies, blockbusters, TV series, gaming titles and more than 2,000 DRM-free music tracks. More content will be added during the year.

From the release:

“Consumers now demand new and exciting content for their mobile phones. With the new extension of our PlayNow™ service, they will have a choice of a unique and compelling alternative to download digital content directly onto their phones offline at the PlayNow™ kiosks available across Asia Pacific,” said Hirokazu Ishizuka, Corporate Vice President, Head of Asia Pacific Region at Sony Ericsson. “Taking advantage that Asia Pacific is the first region to launch, we have customised the solution to include a repertoire of Asian content to suit the local market needs. They can also keep their music downloaded from the PlayNow™ kiosks forever.”

“Our partnership with Sony Ericsson continues to build new markets for music,” said Kelly Chew, senior vice president, marketing, Asia of Sony Music. “Music is a daily companion to most people and we are constantly exploring new ways of making our music, be it full song, video, ringtone; accessible to consumers. With PlayNow™ kiosk, music fans can now enjoy music content, anytime, anywhere on their Sony Ericsson phones.”

What we think?

This seems like a pretty risky move to me. The selling point of mobile content is that it’s mobile. Tying it down to physical kiosks seems to defeat the purpose. That having been said, if you’ve got a rich enough population of subscribers in an area, making it this simple for them to purchase content might drive sales. But you’ve got to deal with all sorts of physical issues like ease of access and queueing, things that mobile phones simply bypass.

This will be an interesting experiment to watch, and see whether actually traveling to a kiosk is easier than browsing the mobile web for content.