back to article Sony wants Ericsson's half of their mobile biz

Sony Corp is in talks with Ericsson to buy out its stake in their 50/50 mobile phone joint venture Sony Ericsson. The ubiquitous "people familiar with the matter" have been busy chatting to both the Wall Street Journal and Reuters about how Sony would like to bring the 10-year pact to an end so that it can integrate …

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  1. Andrew Moore
    Unhappy

    Bye bye SE then...

    I've always liked Ericsson products and hated Sony Products. I've never had a non Ericsson phone but I'll be dropping SE like a hot snot if it becomes a Sony only concern.

  2. Red Bren
    Devil

    Let me correct that...

    "Sony Ericsson did well in the smartphone market when they made decent smartphones"

    As I've said elsewhere, they sounded their retreat from the smartphone market when they released the P990i.

  3. Thomas 4

    Sony Ericsson

    Sony Ericsson used to make big strides in phone development - they introduced one of the first phones with a colour screen (the T68 & T68i), even going as far as to make one of the first MP3 attachments and camera attachment as well.

    In the smartphone sector, there was always strong rivalry between UIQ phones such as the P800, P900, etc and the Communicator range but as @Red Bren pointed out, the P990i was starting to lose ground against its better functioning competitors.

    I also recall the series of Palm based PDAs that Sony produced many, many years ago. Again, there were some really solid designs (my T37 lasted a very long) and they seemed very determined to bring out new ideas (including the first PDA with an OLED screen - released in Japan only).

    If Sony can recapture these glory days and use this acquisition to bring greater diversity to the phone market (rather than just flat touchscreen slab, no buttons, kkthanxbai) then it could really rejunvinate their presence in the phone market. If, on the other hand, they are merely doing this for IP and patents, with a view to ditching Ericssons engineers, then what happened with HP & WebOS will seem like a rousing success story by comparison.

    1. Manu T

      @ Thomas 4

      "Sony Ericsson used to make big strides in phone development - they introduced one of the first phones with a colour screen (the T68 & T68i),,,,"

      May I remind you that the T68 is actually made by Ericsson NOT Sony-Ericsson.

      And the 68i was simply a rebadged T68 with the new SE-logo when Ericsson merged/collaborated with Sony. Sony never had much success with their phones outside Japan. Back then it was Nokia, Ericsson or Motorola.

      I agree that Ericsson made terrific phones. The T39 was fantastic. You could go to war with it. It had incredible reception and there was this big battery that lasted allmost 2 weeks. Not to mention this was the very first bluetooth phone (another Ericsson invention NOT SE).

      In fact both Nokia and Ericsson should be cherrished and should remain native European. Ericsson invented bluetooth. These are the 2 most influential companies that really changed our lives. Unlike the iPhone which is more of a toy invented by a company that sells computing products to snobs and rich kids. As it is there are already too much European hi-tech companies gone. Who remembers the very best European desktop OS, RISC OS. The very first with true scalable anti-aliased fonts on-screen, the easiest object oriented file manager (true drag & drop), RISC cpu's in desktopmachines (in fact these guys invented the ARM processor) and I could go on...

      One o/t better features back then was that the Ericsson phones could handle both Ericsson and Nokia ringtones and graphics but not Vice Versa.

      After the t68i it all started to go downhill. With the K700i and especially the K750i they had their second coming but from then on things got worse. Horrible build quality, lackluster performance. It seems that when all those manufactures decided to build their consumer products in CHina things got horribly wrong, the term "cwappy chinese pwoduct" comes to mind, especially a bad move from a company that used to build very durable phones.

      I've they split it'll be the end of Ericsson that's for sure. Then yet another European Tech landmark goes down the drain (this time it's the bloody japs who's doing it without microsoft moles).

      This is a bloody shame. We're loosing ALL our native hi-tech to greed, corruption and mindless suits with any lack of vision at all. Just look at Samsung. All they do is flood the market with consumer products. There's no clear line, system or structure. They just dump various phones with various OS's and don't even bother to properly upgrade them when there is a possible upgrade.

      As for Sony, they merely wants to cash in on on the Android-train. Especially bad since this train is already over it's peak.

      They're just stupid and will ruin both Ericsson and themselves. Watch my words!

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Not their most glorious of days.

    I can't help but hate Sony. The way they've treated people when their consumer products have gone wrong is far out of step with their professional gear.

    The way they treated people over the years, including the root kit scandal, I thought they would have learned their lesson. However, with their attitude over the account debacle this year, getting people to sign away their rights to class action (OK, I can give a little there) and now forcing their hand in to the second hand games market ... my belief is that they (and various other companies like them) hold their customers almost in contempt.

    I have to wonder why they are making such a move, unless they are in trouble and are trying to find as many avenues as possible to make a proffit. If that assumtion was true, then to that degree I say, crash and burn, Sony, you won't be missed.

  5. Spoonsinger
    Unhappy

    Having lost my phone in a cycle/canal accident, I'm currently using a borrowed Sony-Ericsson Vivaz. Thus I personally think that both should get out of the mobile phone market as they have no idea how to make a phone.

    1. Zmodem

      SE know how to make a phone, you just have to get a walkman phone, they are fully complete and desktop applications that actually work and USB 3g internet on linux and mac

      having ericsson in the name makes them sound better too, then just another sony product, the only thing that sony does good is the PS3

  6. gaz 7

    Isn't this more a case of Sony wanting to buy Erricsson? Cos certainly in the phone and consumer electronics, what would Ericsson be left with?

    1. cloudgazer

      They'd be left with their still profitable business selling equipment to the telecom firms, they made close to $2BN profit last year, and none of it was from handsets or consumer goods.

      1. Manu T

        @ cloudgazer

        Yeah, perhaps they should have left the consumer market in 2001 after the T28/T29/T39 didn't sell too well. The flop o/t T2x/T39 was due to the fact that by then Nokia was the first with cell-phones with integrated antenna's. If anyone remembers the immense popular Nokia 3310?

    2. Daniel B.

      Telecom stuff

      Ericsson does a lot more stuff than just cellphones. Telecom equipment is their specialty as well. They make a lot of money on that stuff :)

      1. Manu T

        Hi Mr. Danial B.,

        I'll correct you on that one.

        "...They make a lot of money on that stuff... for the time being."

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