SONY Ericsson is now eyeing a bigger pie of the market by recently introducing a powerful mobile phone that has both the capabilities of gaming and working.

The Sony Ericsson Xperia Play is Sony Ericsson’s answer to the competitors that have earlier their launched smartphones hoping to cash in manly on the gaming bonanza worldwide. “The Xperia is the first PlayStation-certified phone of Sony Ericsson,” said Vince de la Cruz, head of product marketing of Sony Ericsson, in a recent press briefing held in Makati City.

Hard-core gamers will have a pleasing experience in using the Xperia Play as a total of 400 publishers worldwide are available for use in the Xperia Play. De la Cruz said this excludes the early works of the publishers in earlier Android models. Sony Computer Entertainment and leading game publishers have provided top gaming titles preloaded and available for download from the Android Market.

Sony Ericsson said it has also partnered with Tozai Games to bring the critically acclaimed console hit and gaming franchise “Lode Runner” to Android for the first time. Effective November 2011, it will be available exclusively on Xperia Play and other Xperia devices.

A new partnership with world renowned Square Enix will bring much loved titles such as Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light exclusively to Android on Xperia Play in November 2011.

“Gaming is a $7-billion industry worldwide and we want to capitalize on that. The combined expertise of Sony Ericsson and Android plus the knowledge of game developers has resulted in the development of this wonderful device,” he said.

Aside from its superb gaming features, de la Cruz said the Xperia Play can also be used for business by using cloud-based solutions.

The smartphone offers a 5.1-megapixel camera with autofocus and geo-tagging, Google Services, sound recorder, Noise Shield, Sony Ericsson music player and also supports conference calls, document readers and document editors.

Furthermore, the Xperia Play also features the Sony Ericsson-exclusive Timescape, an application which allows users to view all communications from one contact such as SMS, calls or e-mail in one go.

“The Xperia Play is primarily an Xperia Android smartphone that will have widespread appeal to a number of consumer audiences, including casual and enthusiastic gamers,” said Dennis Manzano, Sony Ericsson general manager, in a statement. .

He added that the smartphone’s official arrival in the local market had been a much-anticipated event affected by concerns on game availability.

The Xperia Play runs on Android 2.3 (Gingerbread), which was developed with gaming as one of its strategic focuses. Coupled with the 1 gigahertz Snapdragon processor and the Adreno 205 GPU, the phone delivers powerful and smooth graphics at 60 frames per second.

“Gingerbread is a step forward with faster and lighter processes that are easier on the processor and so use less battery.  Also, the optimized Snapdragon processor with a 1GHz CPU is designed for minimal power consumption so Xperia Play users can enjoy long hours of battery life and game time,” he added.