Sony In Talks To Buy Ericsson Out of Phone Venture

PolygamousRanchKid sends in this excerpt from a Reuters report: "Sony Corp is in talks to buy out Ericsson's stake in their mobile phone joint venture, a source said, in a bid to catch up with rivals. The move could help Sony recoup ground in the battle against Apple Inc and Samsung Electronics, where it has been hampered by its disparate offerings of mobile gadgets and online content. The joint venture, formed in 2001, thrived after its breakthroughs with Walkman music phones and Cybershot cameraphones, both of which leveraged Sony's brands. But it lost out to bigger rivals Nokia and Samsung at the cheaper end of the market, and was late to react to Apple's entry into the high-end of the market. It has refocused its business to make smartphones using Google's Android platform, but has dropped to No. 9 in global cellphone rankings from No. 4 just a few years ago."

Too late?

[bsharitt]

I wonder if this is just a bit too late. It seems that Samsung has surpassed Sony as the everywhere premium electronics brand Sony was in the 90's.

Sony, No!

[PopeRatzo]

Sony can burn in hell.

At some point, consumers have to develop the discipline to exercise their only leverage and let corporations know that there are certain things that will not be tolerated.

Sony is by no means the only one on the list, or even the worst, but they've earned their way onto my pay-no-mind list.

The Sony portable minidisc recorder I bought at a garage sale some years ago for $5 in order to cannibalize the AD/DA converters was the last Sony product I will ever buy.

Re:Not necessarily too late

[Imbrondir]

They have extremely talented engineers. Their problem is that they are ruled by their content divisions for some reason. I believe they'd have to either sell Sony BMG and Sony pictures, OR get them under control and give their engineers room to make what consumers want.

This weird situation was well showcased when the x360 got content from Sony Pictures before the PS3.