Sony buys up Ericsson shares, lets all its products come together
In August, I reviewed the Sony Ericsson Xperia Play. While I thought it was a great device, there were definitely some quirks. It seems to be like that with all Sony Ericsson phones, though, and even the joint venture between the two companies itself has its issues. None of us will have to worry about that anymore, though, as today, Sony bought Ericsson's shares and will now make all of its own smartphone hardware.
Ericsson is a Swedish telecom company. It joined up with Sony in 2001 to help both companies get into the booming cell phone industry. Unfortunately, it didn't work out too well for either company, although Ericsson made money off of it anyway, thanks to licensing deals. But, really, that was the only way; hardly anyone would buy a Sony Ericsson dumb or smartphone because generally, they were much worse than the competition.
Ericsson, owning 50% of the Sony Ericsson joint venture's shares, also held some of Sony's best ideas up. The latter company always wanted to tie its many product lines (laptops, tablets, PlayStation platform) together, but never had an easy time doing so. Thankfully, now that Sony can make its own smartphones, it can start to tie all of its products together and hopefully make some better devices.
Ericsson isn't going away, though; in fact, that company should be making a huge comeback. As the inventor of Bluetooth and simply being a telecom giant, Ericsson can focus on what it does best: producing mobile connectivity chipsets.
[PCMag]
