London (England) - Even though Sony admitted failure with its Connect digital music store, the company's mobile phone division is mulling its own music platform.

Sony Ericsson said today that it plans to have a new mobile music service up and running by the second quarter of next year.  This would be a big step from the phone manufacturer's current platform, which only gives users access to downloads of Sony BMG music.

Sony says it has already received support from EMI Group, Universal Music, and Warner Music. "The situation today is that we have offers on the table of 5 million music tracks, as a first step, from all the majors, as well as local and independent labels," said Sony Ericsson head of content acquisition Martin Blomkvist.

The company did not say how much it would charge for music tracks, but did mention that they would be available in MP3 and Windows Media formats.  The news comes at the end of a tumultuous year for Sony in the digital music market.  Earlier this year, Sony announced it will be pulling the plug on Connect, essentially its version of iTunes, by March 2008.  Sony will also end support for its proprietary DRM (digital rights management) format ATRAC.