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Sony Buys Ericsson Out For $1.47 Billion
First time accepted submitter Diggester writes with this snippet from PC World: "Sony took a page out of the playbooks of Microsoft and Apple, announcing it would buy out its smartphone partner, Ericsson, to more tightly integrate smartphones with Sony's laptops, tablets and televisions. The move gives Sony complete control over its smartphone business, while Ericsson will now focus more broadly on wireless connectivity for products beyond mobile handsets. Sony purchased Ericsson's share of the Sony Ericsson partnership for about $1.47 billion. Rumors about Sony's takeover of Sony Ericsson surfaced in early October."
Given Sony's past habits, does this mean a rapid spin away from unlocked bootloaders on their phones (unless perhaps someone gets their hands on the key for some Sony-installed rootkit that might be installed in the factory?)
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The smart-phone scene has been a little boring of late..
Probably a good move. With a large portfolio of consumer products this was much more likely than Ericsson buying from Sony.
Indeed, the PSP could use some of the Sony Ericsson wizardry.
10 years ago , Apple was no where in smartphone game and Ericsson was in Top 5 smartphone makers. Now apple is one of top 5 vendors and Ericsson no longer makes phone.
But no more.
I can tell you that this comes as no big surprise. Both Ericsson and Sony Ericsson are incredibly slow moving companies with way to much bureaucracy. They have lots of engineers who are very skilled at implementing specifications to the letter, but not at adapting to change. Last I heard from them, they were still using a 10 year old version of ClearCase as the main VCS, which had to be restarted about twice a day because there were so many problems with it. Upgrading was completely out of the question. It didn't help that the engineer to manager ratio was something like 2:1, which meant the manager had to continually schedule meeting after meeting to give the appearance of them doing useful work.
LTE will probably be Ericssons last major success, which they will have to share with Huawei, because their equipment isn't that much better, it's just more expensive. After that it will likely be sold unless they can give the developers free reign again to come up with brilliant creative ideas. That's how they got Erlang and AXE, which carried the company all the way through the 90's. Those successes won't be repeated as long as the managers hold a tight grip on the company.
How about the fact that they push playback, transfer, and region restrictions in both hardware and media more aggressively than any other company? How about the DRM on their music CDs that turned out to be a full-fledged rootkit? How about the fact that it wasn't just removing OtherOS as an official feature, but continually updating the firmware to disable every hack anyone invented to get it back after it was disabled in the first place? Is it really such a crime to want control over something you bought and paid for that I'm just some "butthurt" little whiner if I criticize Sony?
There. I gave you other arguments. Sony probably does more than any other company to punish you for the crime of buying their product. I can't imagine what kind of ignorant twit could, with a straight-face, call someone "a damn cliche hipster suffragist" for calling Sony a bunch of assholes without specifically listing every single example of their malfeasance.
When did Microsoft or Apple buy their smartphone partner? How is this a page out of their play books? Why is Apple or Microsoft mentioned in this article? Everything isn't always about them.
- Henrik
- when the Shadows descend -
Sony Ericcson... I used to halfway hate that company...
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
Sorry, but otherOS would still be around if people had used it for homebrew instead of trying to pirate stuff or run emulators. The PlayStation lineup was always good about supporting indie dev when it was legit, with the ps1, ps2, ps3, and PSV all having options for it at one time or another. They had to disable the hacks because again, people kept using them to pirate, and piracy is not something you have the right to do.
Sony is hard to think of as a monolithic company. the content generators (Tristar, Columbia, Sony BMG) tend to be very DRM heavy, while the hardware folks don't seem to care. The game consoles tend to be very open for what they are as well, compared to their rivals.
I have to wonder if this will mean the North American presence for Sony(Ericsson) phones will increase, as well as end missed release dates and vaporware. What may happen to the Java Platform operating system present on the majority of SonyEricsson "feature" phones, like the WalkMan and CyberShot phones prior to Android. I am also hoping that making customizations will still be easily done and sites which provide services or support for customizations, unlocking, firmware flashing, ELF mods, and so on will not feel the wrath of Sony's legal department.
Or, if you want to listen to music you've already purchased, you need to manually enter your DRM code...
Or, you'll need your phone to access Sony Online, and when they get hacked again, you'll have your phone number all over the world...
Or they promise a phone that runs linux, and halfway through your contract, they remove linux...
I mean, this is *SONY*... If there's a way to screw this up, they will find it.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
Erlang is an Ericsson product, and they've released or assisted on a number of other products. Sony - well, they're famous for closed products, rootkits and the walkman. I'm not overly convinced I trust those guys to honour prior license agreements (there are plenty of products that were GPL that have been made proprietary with the open source variant deleted from the catalogue completely). I am very concerned.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I think the problem for Sony was their hardware division had to place restrictions to placate their content division whereas other manufacturers don't have a content division. Remember the first digital Walkman? It forced you to use ATRAC instead of the standard MP3. If your music was MP3, it would convert it to ATRAC first. Meanwhile the iPod and everyone else let you play MP3s
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
They had to disable the hacks because again, people kept using them to pirate, and piracy is not something you have the right to do.
What pisses people off isn't that they can't pirate (as if), it's that they bought a product with a certain feature which was later disabled without their consent. Maybe they "had" to disable the otherOS feature, but if they were "just doing what's right" they would have offered a refund for anyone who chose to send back their PS3. It's clearly bait-and-switch.
*puts on glasses*
Sony lost their Erection.
YEAAAH!
"..One hosts to look them up, one DNS to find them, and in the darkness BIND them."
no more Sony Ericsson Xperia Play
Sony bought out Ericssons share in the SonyEricsson joint venture -
This is the portion of GIANT EQUIPMENT manufacturer Ericsson which made mobile handsets
Sony did *not* buy Ericsson itself.
see what else ericsson does here:
http://www.ericsson.com/ourportfolio/products
You didn't even read my comment.
TLDR version: It doesn't matter why they took linux away, it's bait-and-switch without refunds.
Ericsson has never been good at consumer electronics. The main reason for not quitting phone making 10 years ago was to secure supply of phones compatible with the mobile network standards they were advocating.