Sony Ericsson Dropping Ericsson Name in 2012
Once Ericsson becomes a subsidiary of Sony next month, Android smartphones produced by the company will only sport the Sony brand.
Just before Halloween, Ericsson and Sony Corp announced that the latter company will acquire Ericsson's 50-percent stake in the ten-year joint venture, and that the Ericsson half would be incorporated into the Sony collective. The transaction is still on track to close in January 2012, and will produce a cash consideration of EUR 1.05 billion for Ericsson.
Now an executive is reporting that the Sony Ericsson brand will be phased out by the middle of 2012 -- all smartphones will thus be sold under the single Sony brand. The feature phone portfolio will also be killed off in favor of an all-Android army of phones to take on Android heavyweights such as Samsung and Motorola. Apparently the Xperia line of Android phones is just the beginning.
"A lot of planning goes into getting the branding right but we will be done by middle of next year," said Kristian Tear, executive VP & head of sales & marketing, Sony Ericsson. "It will also mean that the marketing and advertising investments will go up. We haven't been as fierce as we were a few years back but we will step it up, refocus and invest more in brand-building in select markets and India is one of those markets."
Sony and Ericsson teamed up ten years ago as the latter company -- who was the third largest mobile phone manufacturer at the time -- sought out an Asian firm that could mass-produce cheaper handsets. Sony was also struggling at the time, capturing a mere 1-percent of the global market. The duo thus went on to produce the Walkman and Cyber-shot phones with some success, but entered rough waters in 2007 when the iPhone hit the market at the same time Sony Ericsson chose to stay with Symbian.
In 2009 Sony Ericsson underwent a management change and ditched Symbian altogether, choosing Google's Android OS instead. As of this writing the company commands a small 2-percent of the mobile market despite the success of the PlayStation certified phone, the Xperia Play. But now that Ericsson is part of Sony as a whole rather than just a partner, the company plans to leverage more from Sony's success as a multimedia giant and regain its footing, taking a bigger chunk of the market.
"Sony is the world's biggest entertainment company," he added. "We were earlier a 50-50 JV, but now that we are a wholly-owned subsidiary of Sony Corp., we expect to gain from its assets on the content, technology and brand side."
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Curse you, Nokia, for not doing the same. I used to like your phones the most.
Curse you, Nokia, for not doing the same. I used to like your phones the most.
I dunno...i actually like sony-ericsson's symbian phones, they've implemented the OS very well. VERY convenient and highly customisable options within the OS. Better than Nokia, IMO, though Nokia's battery life is usually awesome.
I always liked Ericsson products, so when it came time to upgrade I got a Sony Ericsson phone... I realized too late that this one required me to use a memory stick for my expansion memory... 40$ for something I could have paid 10$ (Micro SD) for... Never again, Sony has ruined a great brand for me.
Sony Ericsson K610i was the best phone I've ever had. Too bad they're discontinued. And yeah, I liked Symbian.
Sony never had much market share in the past and today again nobody is waiting for a Sony branded phone. For several reasons.
1) Sony is a brand entity has created a very bad name for itself amongst techsavvy people (rootkit, bullying playstation 3 tactics etc...)
2) At the start Sony-Ericsson featurephones where very good. Because they were essentially Ericsson producs. But gradually the Sony influence became stronger and the quality of their products detoriated.
3) Also their featurephones were good much better than their smartphones. This still is so unfortunatly nobody sells Sony(-Ericsson) featurephones anymore. I mean that Elm looks more interesting than Nokia's C3-01/X3-02 yet it's nowhere to find.
Another influencial company that's digging its own grave. Stupid.
Also Sony ditching Symbian and only using Android (as if there aren't enough Android phone developpers already) is a wrong decision. Nobody is waiting for a bland Android model amongst the better quality HTC's, more outspoken technically advanced Samsungs or cheap and crappy Huawei/ZTE models.
Sony has finally caught on and sees the importance of the mobile market - seeing as some of their other divisions (TV & Consoles) aren't doing as well as once they were. Buying Ericsson and entrenching (and developing handsets) would have been a better move a year or so ago.
Hopefully they can offer some innovative competitive products.
I'm personally intersested to see how this develops.
killing Symbian is not good, becuase if Symbian gets no attention anymore, then Android will take over for sure and Symbian will die, and if google decides to charge for Android or keep it exclusive to a few companies, then we are all screwed, and Symbian will be left behind as it will lack attention/updates and apps, Also, since, more and more companies that use Android, in a way, help to give more attention to Android making it a success, so in the event google pulls the plug, they will be gaining off all the work of other companies (that helped make android s success). Right now its the other companies that are working in a way to Market Android, and google bennifits by that, and doens't have to put any marketing effort. (Google gets free marketing, and a new marketshare of the mobile os market, in exchange for a company to use the os for free right now). Since google uses linux, developement costs are dow, so google is getting a free ride.. But now that all the companies help android get where google wanted it to go, google could change the terms as they already got all the free publicity they wanted for next to nothing, and bennifit almost 100% in the deal. This could lead to a scary solution, as in the future all alternative OS's would have died off, and companies will have no choice but to use Android. And even as good of a name brand is, if a customer doesn't get what they want, the company will risk loosing the customer.
THis is why, if companies played it smart, have two lines of products. The second line is for keeping the other OS alive for in the event something bad happens with Android.
killing Symbian is not good, becuase if Symbian gets no attention anymore, then Android will take over for sure and Symbian will die, and if google decides to charge for Android or keep it exclusive to a few companies, then we are all screwed, and Symbian will be left behind as it will lack attention/updates and apps, Also, since, more and more companies that use Android, in a way, help to give more attention to Android making it a success, so in the event google pulls the plug, they will be gaining off all the work of other companies (that helped make android s success). Right now its the other companies that are working in a way to Market Android, and google bennifits by that, and doens't have to put any marketing effort. (Google gets free marketing, and a new marketshare of the mobile os market, in exchange for a company to use the os for free right now). Since google uses linux, developement costs are dow, so google is getting a free ride.. But now that all the companies help android get where google wanted it to go, google could change the terms as they already got all the free publicity they wanted for next to nothing, and bennifit almost 100% in the deal. This could lead to a scary solution, as in the future all alternative OS's would have died off, and companies will have no choice but to use Android. And even as good of a name brand is, if a customer doesn't get what they want, the company will risk loosing the customer.THis is why, if companies played it smart, have two lines of products. The second line is for keeping the other OS alive for in the event something bad happens with Android.
I don't think Google is dumb enough to close off Android to only a few companies, they make no money selling the OS since they don't sell it, they make money on ad and search revenue from the phones and the more companies and phones with Android the more money they make.
killing Symbian is not good, becuase if Symbian gets no attention anymore, then Android will take over for sure and Symbian will die...
Symbian is already dead.
Symbian is dead, it was crap back when the first models came out and it's definitely crap now that android , ios and mango is here. Just look at Nokia and there obsession with symbian and see where that led. But i don't think Sony will make a dent in the mobile market they will probably make PlayStation phones and Walkman's but there won't be any more distinctive features among then and they will get lost in the crowd. Expensive and uninovative does't work just ask Nokia
Sony makes some sh*ty phones. They need to be on par with Samsung. They're not even on par with HTC at the moment. I really wanted the Playstation phone to do well, but the hardware sucks. Give me a phone with at least 16GB of internal memory. If they can do that and their customers that they are serious about pushing out updates, then they might succeed.
The Samsung Galaxy S and S2 are very popular because of the huge development community. Wish I can say the same about Sony phones.