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.
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."
