Sony Ericsson is offering owners of its Xperia smartphones 50GB of free online data storage in partnership with cloud storage company Box, the smartphone maker said on Thursday.

The promotion starts today and will last until Dec. 31, 2012, according to Sony Ericsson. It's available to all consumers worldwide who own any Xperia smartphone including the X10 and later releases.

Smartphone users are taking pictures, listening to music and watching video on their Xperia smartphones more than ever before, and therefore need more storage capacity, Sony Ericsson said.

By creating a Box account and logging in through the Box for Android application users can access the storage capacity, which will then be available indefinitely.

The Box application for Android allows users to browse, view and share content on-the-go. Users can also access favorite content faster with caching and save files locally for offline access, according to Box's website.

Besides Android, Box also offers applications for Apple's iPhone and iPad; Hewlett-Packard's TouchPad; and Research In Motion's BlackBerry phones and PlayBook.

The news doesn't come as a surprise. At the end of last month, Sony Ericsson mistakenly announced the offering, which was soon retracted because the company said it was still ironing out the details of the storage deal.

This week Microsoft released an iOS app offering 25 GB of free storage to iPhone users. The SkyDrive app, which has previously been available for Windows Phone, beats Apple's existing offer of 5 GB of free storage in the iCloud service.

Sony Ericsson is in a period of transition, as Sony takes over the company after having recently acquired Ericsson's stake in the joint venture.

The company will become a Sony subsidiary in January. In the short term, the Sony Ericsson brand will live on. But Sony is working on coming up with a new one.

Send news tips and comments to mikael_ricknas@idg.com