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."

Re:Good for them

[plover]

I lost all respect for Sony after Sony Entertainment Group pushed the hardware teams into implementing DRM. I don't buy Sony anymore, nor do I recommend it to friends and family.

SE's return

[Zouden]

It'll be interesting to see Sony-Ericsson return to the market. I remember when they were a big player alongside Nokia, Motorola and Samsung, but things are completely different in the post-iPhone (ie, Android) world. With Nokia out of the picture, and Motorola focusing almost entirely on the US market (even more than usual), it's really just Samsung and HTC. Both have done extremely well with Android. Sony-Ericsson, if they can move beyond the lackluster Xperia range, can bring a lot more diversity to the Android system.

I still won't buy one, you know, because it's Sony. But I welcome the competition.

End of an era

[ArhcAngel]

Google announced it is buying Motorola's mobile division in August and now Sony is going to swallow Ericsson mobile. I remember when "car" phones first came out those were about the only choices you had. How long until Microsoft buys Nokia?