Sony 'Ericsson' bites the dust

[Ben]

Sony has taken full control of JV Sony Ericsson, making the unit a 100% owned division of Sony. The deal, pegged at €1.1bn, includes some patents and patent licenses.

From the article, "Earlier this month, Sony Ericsson broke even in its third quarter and announced it would focus on smartphones from 2012.

The company said its Xperia smartphones accounted for 80% of its sales. The handsets run Google's Android operating system.

Analysts said Sony had proved resistant to sharing its brands and other assets with the joint venture, explaining why it took until this year for PlayStation games to be offered on any of its handsets."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-15473954

I had a Sony J5 handset back in the day. What a strange handset that was! There's no doubt in my mind that Ericsson gave Sony's handset ambitions legitimacy, but that all started to fall by the wayside a few years back. Now that handsets need only be a collection of generic components capable of running Android, perhaps this is the right time for Sony to take handset creation back in-house.

[miffed]

Speaking of Ericcson , I always wanted one of these , but never got one !

http://pdadb.net/img/ericsson_r380.jpg

[Wilt]

I hope they keep the logo...

[Ben]

Implying that the logo was the one thing the JV got right? ;)

I think we're set for an entire new Sony sub-brand.

[Wilt]

Ha, well, when was the last time you saw somebody buy one of their phones? ;)

I actually think they're a victim of poor marketing - my other half recently got an Xperia Neo and for a mid range phone it is amazing. Body is a little bit plasticy but looks nice - and their additions to Android compliment rather than intrude, it's very faithful to stock - as somebody who has had both of the Nexus phones simply so that I didn't have to deal with the extra OEM crap, I can safely say I would be perfectly happy using SEs flavour of Android.

I don't really see Sony doing any better with the company than the JV did - lately Sony has been lurching from blunder-to-blunder. The only large consumer success Sony has had lately is the PS3 and that's only riding on the previous success of the PlayStation brand. The Xbox would have steamrollered them if they weren't already so established.

The only real improvement that I can see at the moment is that Sony might be more willing to add things like the PlayStation branding & technology to the phones. I know previously they have been reluctant because they didn't have 100% control.

[Hands0n]

I'm kind of with Wilt on this. Sony has lost all of its glitz in my opinion. Anything that they did right in the 70's and 80's is long gone now ever since they stopped doing the stuff that made them great. Things like using hi-grade components in their devices, it jacked up the price but their stuff was bullet proof, it worked forever! I still have one of their DVD players from the early days of DVD, it cost me a fortune then, but its still in my stack and works as well as it did on day one!

I do think that Sony will completely cock up the SE product line, not that it really needs too much more cocking up. I know some rave about the Xperia range but I think it is absolutely dreadful, the XP1 being the leader of dreadful. I quite liked the look of the Arc, but the general public obviously didn't as can be seen by its lack of sales success. Their Play handset has been heavily discounted, soon to be seen inside packs of Corn Flakes.

I really cannot see Sony making things any better, they do not know smartphones.

[Ben]

I'm not so sure you know. There's not a lot to an Android smartphone these days other than some nice design at a reasonable cost. Sony have surely learnt a lot from their time with Ericsson, and the JV had just managed to return to break-even after years of going down the pan.

[Hands0n]

You are absolutely right Ben. The key to success in Android is differentiation, something that SE has tried but not succeeded to do very well in my opinion. The Arc and the Play were nice enough, but what they offered was not what people seem to have wanted. We now see these handsets gone into oblivion within months of being released on sale.

One has to look to Samsung to see how to succeed in Android. Their Galaxy series has proven highly successful and continue to be so, placing them at the number one slot for smartphone sales for the end of this year. That is some achievement.

[3GScottishUser]

One could see this coming. Poor SonyEricsson have become a budget phone brand lately and thats not a good place for a big company like Sony.

The CEO of Sony has stated the branding will be changed but they have not decided what to as yet.