Sona Mobile, a leading provider of wireless software to the financial services, enterprise, entertainment and gaming markets, announced today that it is launching the first-ever BlackBerry Media Player.

BlackBerry Media Player is a software application designed exclusively to offer multimedia applications on the latest generation of RIM devices. It is designed for near TV quality playback of synchronized video and audio files. This groundbreaking application will be showcased at the Wireless Enterprise Symposium May 16-18, 2006 in Orlando, Florida. There you will be able to see also Sona’s first client, CanWest Global.

“We are thrilled to be first to market with a media player for BlackBerry® devices. For the very first time, BlackBerry® users can receive either BerryCast (PodCasts wirelessly updated) or streaming video on their mobile devices,” said John Bush, CEO and President of Sona Mobile. “And being able to announce CanWest MediaWorks as our first customer who will supply news content daily for a Sona Mobile BerryCast(TM), lets RIM customers take advantage of a download-and-play method of delivering multimedia files to BlackBerry® devices. We believe that this application will be well-received in the marketplace.”

“We are very excited about being first to market with Sona,” said Mario Alfano, Senior Vice President, Marketing and Strategy of CanWest MediaWork’s Interactive Division. “Being able to provide our news and TV content to BlackBerry® users opens up an important new market for CanWest MediaWorks, and the availability of relevant Canadian video content is very good news for BlackBerry® users.”

The new application will allow BlackBerry users to receive wirelessly updated Podcasts, which they refer to as “BerryCasts,” or watch streaming video. CanWest MediaWorks is the only supplier of regular “BerryCasts” so far. This is a big step for BlackBerry devices as they were lacking in terms of multimedia capabilities, especially when compared to similar Windows Mobile or Palm devices. Not all BlackBerry’s are supported though, only the latest generation of BlackBerry devices which most likely include the 7100 and 8700 series.