Sony to assume full control of the Sony Ericsson brand

by Alistair Lowe on 28 October 2011, 08:19

Tags: Sony Ericsson, Sony (NYSE:SNE)

Quick Link: HEXUS.net/qa7t4

Add to My Vault: x

Reported as a likely possibility earlier this month by the Wall Street Journal, Sony has finally announced a buyout of Ericsson's 50 per cent share in the Sony Ericsson brand, shelling out €1.05 billion, with the buyout expected to be completed in January 2012.

The move had been further hinted by Sony CEO Kazuo Hirai at the recent AsiaD conference where he stated, in a very roundabout discussion, the importance of an integrated user experience of hardware, software and services and how it has proven difficult to deliver this synergy with the two companies not working fully in step.

We suspect Sony has made the right choice in integrating the otherwise stagnated Sony Ericsson brand. Harmonising with Kazuo's earlier words, Sony president and chairman, Sir Howard Stringer, went on to announce that Sony will be dropping feature phones, implying the death of the Walkman brand, in favour of smartphone technology. This makes a lot of sense, because Sony has a strong media presence that can best present itself on the multimedia-rich capabilities of a smartphone. Financially, Sony Ericsson had managed to return to profit last fiscal year, after dropping some of its low-end products in favour of Android-powered smartphones, forming a strong case that this is the right way forward for Sony as a single entity.

Sony Xperia Play

The hopes are that with this purchase, we will no longer be seeing any dated-on-release devices like the Xperia Play and that Sony will be able to react to changes in the market and improvements in technology at a much-greater pace.

We dare not speculate on this final comment, though welcome our readers to, for when Sir Stringer was asked if Sony would be willing to purchase WebOS, his response was, "Never say never."



HEXUS Forums :: 7 Comments

Login with Forum Account

Don't have an account? Register today!
Cool.
Sony have been struggling with the SE contract lately. It's been roadblocking their path to joining up things like their Phones, Walkmans, eReaders, PSPs and Tablets.
Wonder if the focus on smartphones (Xperia) at the expense of the dumb ones will mean “better” models? The SE range - on the whole - looks good (e.g. an Arc S is a more stylish device than an iPhone4S), but not exactly “cutting edge” technologically. For example, HTC, Motorola, Samsung, LG, etc all have dual core phones, SE don't.

What I'd like is a “Walkman” Xperia able to take SDXC cards and with a kick-backside sound capability multi-core processor, and an (AM)OLED screen - the SDXC slot so I can have large capacity cards and replace my current iPod (Classic). At present that's really the only kind of thing that'd persuade me to switch my current SE X10 for another Xperia when renewal time comes.

With development cycles being the length they are I guess we won't see the effects of Sony-only control for at least a year or two.
Crossy: bare in mind if the issue they have now is treading on Sony's toes, that will disappear the moment they are bought. I assume even if the designs are SE originated they will be free to team up with Walkman for S-Master amps and so on.

I agree on the processor side and maybe Sony's odd love for low amounts of memory, but I think the Neo and Arc are rather nice.
I was a big SE fan back in the day and would still be using them now if HTC didnt make such damn nice android phones :D

What does this mean for eriksson though? WIll they start making their own phones again or are they going to be getting out of the handset market all together?