For a while I was right: from 2o01 until 2008 I was a die hard Sony Ericsson fanboy and I was not alone. At the time I had bought my second Ericsson, the A2628s, and I figured that the partnership could only mean great things for the handsets. When Sony Ericsson announced their partnership in 2001, I was one of the first people on board.
The rumors were seeping out for years, but after a third straight year of seeing nothing but red in Sony Ericsson’s books, Sony decided to pull the trigger.
In a series of bad moves such as initially choosing Windows Mobile for its Xperia line, then flipping over to Symbian in less than one product cycle, and then scrambling to catch up with the Android buzz, Sony was rumored to be increasingly disgruntled with how Ericsson was handling the venture and wanted out. This doesn’t make Sony immune to patent lawsuits that are bound to come its way from other mobile giants such as Apple, but it does make them less of a target since Ericsson holds patents to an enormous amount of technologies used in mobile phones today, ranging from base stations down to internal phone antennas.įor years Sony Ericsson has been bleeding cash and the joint venture has seemed to lack focus and direction since the iPhone came out in 2007. The deal will make the mobile phone manufacturer a “wholly-owned subsidiary of Sony and integrated into Sony’s broad platform of network-connected consumer electronics products.” Ericsson’s massive mobile patent library that Sony Ericsson used to its advantage is not being sold with the other assets but instead will be part of a cross-licensing deal that was stipulated in the buyout terms. In line with previous rumors and speculation, Sony has finally dropped the ax on the Sony Ericsson joint venture and buy Ericsson’s stake outright for $1.5 billion in cash.
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