Symbian Smartphone Show, London, October 17, 2006 – Sony Ericsson today announced its complete offering for OpenGL ES, the industry standard, cross-platform Application Programming Interface (API) enabling powerful 3D graphics on mobile phones. Following an extensive implementation program, Sony Ericsson’s support for OpenGL now includes in-market mobile phones and games, a Software Development Kit (SDK), developer tutorial and a discussion forum, all designed to accelerate the market for next generation mobile gaming.

Considered the de facto cross-platform API for 2D and 3D graphics, not only on gaming consoles but also for the next generation of mobile phones, OpenGL ES holds significant promise for new, more compelling gaming experiences. OpenGL ES offers the opportunity to improve the quality of mobile games significantly by enabling new graphic features, allowing the separate Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) to handle all graphics rendering and freeing up Central Processing Unit (CPU) capacity for other calculations, which lead to better gaming performance.

Building upon its market leadership in Mobile Java™ 3D technology with over 40 phones and hundreds of games, Sony Ericsson is now working with Imagination Technologies to support application development for the three UIQ 3 based phones, the M600 messaging device, P990 smartphone and W950 Walkman® phone which all support OpenGL ES and feature full PowerVR® hardware 3D graphics acceleration. A comprehensive SDK for OpenGL ES including a step-by-step tutorial – an industry first for the Symbian platform – and a dedicated discussion forum are available for free from Sony Ericsson Developer World. There are already a number of gaming applications in development from key development partners which will soon be made available for download from the Sony Ericsson Application Shop.

“For those companies and individuals looking toward the ‘Next Gen’ of mobile gaming, there is no better time to invest than now. OpenGL ES will do for smartphones what Mobile Java 3D has already done for mass-market feature phones – it brings a powerful 3D experience to both casual and more advanced gamers who have come to expect high-performance gaming on Sony Ericsson phones,“ said Mikael Nerde, Head of Developer Program & Content Planning at Sony Ericsson. “We are extremely pleased to be the first to offer the tools, technology and know-how for OpenGL ES in the mobile space, considerably improving the quality of games whilst reducing development cycles and saving costs.”

The new SDK helps developers create compelling 3D graphics for mobile games and content, taking full advantage of the PowerVR 3D hardware acceleration technology from Imagination Technologies used on the Sony Ericsson P990, M600 and W950 phones.

“The PowerVR hardware acceleration core from Imagination Technologies delivers the performance needed to port console class games onto Sony Ericsson’s UIQ 3 based phones, delivering massive triangle and fill rates along with full 3D features for the best image quality and jaw-dropping 3D,” said Tony King-Smith, VP of Marketing at Imagination Technologies.

In a few easy-to-follow guidelines, the OpenGL ES tutorials included in the SDK help developers get started using the OpenGL ES 1.1 API, taking developers through initialization, how to render a triangle, 3D drawing, basic Texturing, Transform and Lighting, loading of textures and printing text on the screen, and handling optimized geometry including animations.

For further information visit the Sony Ericsson Developer World.