Ericsson to sell its stake in Sony Ericsson, Sony becoming the sole owner

Ericsson has announced that it's selling its part of the joint Swedish-Japanese venture Sony Ericsson for $1.47 billion (1.05 billion euros). The Japanese Sony Corporation will become the sole owner of the phone maker in an attempt to boost its mobile portfolio.

"Sony will acquire Ericsson's 50 per cent stake in Sony Ericsson... making the mobile handset business a wholly-owned subsidiary of Sony," Ericsson said. The decision has already passed approval of both companies' boards, but it's, of course, yet to pass regulatory approval by January 2012. The deal evaluates the whole of Sony Ericsson at around $3.0 billion, almost four times less than what Google paid to acquire Motorola Mobility.

SE will be integrated into Sony's network-connected consumer products, but quite importantly Sony will also get a huge patent portfolio including five key wireless phone patent families via a cross-licensing agreement.

Earlier, a well positioned Sony executive said that SE is a key partner in Sony's attempt to put more of its products, including games on mobile devices. It all seems logical, as the new handsets could easily make use of Sony's broad Playstation gaming portfolio. SE itself has moved in that direction by launching the PS-certified Sony Ericsson Xperia Play.

Ericsson is receiving the $1.47 billion for its 50% share in the JV, which was set up back in 2001. It all started on a high note with a series of stylish phones with color displays such as the Sony Ericsson T68i, but the company also released a couple of high-end big screened models in the P series – a rarity at the time. Around 2003 and a couple of years later, the company switched focus to its strong camera-centric K series.

In the middle of the first decade of the new millenium, Sony Ericsson treated us with its music series – the Walkman phones, which were also greeted warmly. Around that time, the smartphone race really picked up and the company couldn't catch up. It became more evident with the launch of the iPhone which caught the company off guard. Chief executive Bert Nordberg admitted: "It's safe to say that Sony Ericsson should have taken the iPhone more seriously when it arrived in 2007."

Most recently, Sony Ericsson has said that it will switch its focus to smartphones alone. The phone maker accounts for 11% of all Androids and its latest offerings in the high-end Xperia series include the Sony Ericsson Xperia arc S and the Sony Ericsson Xperia neo V.

Sony Ericsson Slump Strengthens Buyout Rumors

Sony Ericsson announced it will manufacture only smartphones next year, as earnings stall and rumors of Sony's buyout of the Swedish half of the joint venture ramp up.

Sony Ericsson's sales held steady in the past quarter, mostly due to the success of Android-based Xperia phones, which account for 80 percent of the company's sales. However, the handset manufacturer took a big hit in the European market, where sales dropped more than 40 percent as a result of the debt crisis, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Reports of stagnant third-quarter earnings comes as Sony mulls a possible buyout of Ericsson to take control of the company.

A successful Sony buyout may give the Swedish handset-maker access to coveted Sony content, services, and games, potentially insulating Ericsson from an increasingly competitive and volatile smartphone market. Earlier this year, Sony Ericsson released the Xperia Play smartphone, which combines the gaming functionality of Sony's PlayStation with Ericsson's best-selling Android phone, showing potential for further crossover product development in the event that Sony takes control.

On Sony's side, a deal may likely help the Japanese electronics giant gain ground against top mobile sellers from Apple and Samsung, and strengthen its position in the mobile device market, where it commands only a small share.

Potential deal aside, Sony Ericsson's plans to shift entirely to smartphones next year may prove a difficult path. Smartphones are growing in popularity, with more users moving away from basic handsets to choose feature-rich devices.

However, the cutthroat and crowded market is dominated by big players. For example, Apple's iPhone 4S is selling out in its first week, and Android-powered phones are hitting the market at a rapid pace, making it difficult for newer companies looking to make their mark to find traction in a growing field of competitors.

Currently, Sony Ericsson controls about 11 percent of the Android-based smartphone market, lagging far behind top makers like Samsung and HTC.

Slowing sales and a fierce and crowded smartphone market may make it difficult for Sony Ericsson to get ahead in the mobile device world, though Sony's rumored buyout may increase its chances of success.

Exciting new Smartphone Sony Ericsson Live Walkman

Music fans should be excited to hear that Sony Ericsson just launched the new Live with Walkman smartphone featuring a button for instant music access and Facebook integration. You can connect directly to Facebook within the photo gallery, music player, calendar and phonebook. A dedicated hardware button connects users to Sony’s Qriocity music platform which offers instant video and music streaming.

Phone is handsome in look and design it is having 106 x 56.5 x 14.2 mm dimension and 115 gm weight. Device is dedicated walkman features and operats with Android OS, v2.3 Gingerbread also has powerful 1 GHz processor with 512 MB RAM Memory which runs this smart phone smoothly while operating the device.

Handset has 3.2 inches touchscreen, 16M colors, 320 x 480 pixels Resolution, Scratch-resistant surface, Accelerometer sensor for auto-rotate, Multi-touch input method and Proximity sensor for auto turn-off features plays MP4/H.263/H.264/WMV player and MP3/eAAC+/WMA/WAV player.

Live with Walkman has decent 5 Mega pixel camera with features autofocus, LED flash, Geo-tagging, image stabilization, smile and face detection and touch focus.

Other features like TrackID music recognition, 3.5 mm jack with Sony xLOUD enhancement and loudspeaker also available.The handset has all type of connectivity Features such are Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, GPS, GPRS, EDGE, 3G and v2.0 microUSB. It is also a good social networking phone it has many type of social apps like Google Search, Maps, Gmail, YouTube, Calendar, Google Talk, Facebook, MySpace and twitter etc.

Unlocked Sony Ericsson Live With Walkman phone is equipped with plenty of impressive features such are Stereo FM radio with RDS, Digital compass, Document editor, Voice memo, Predictive text input, Supports java apps, Games, HTML Web Browser etc.