subject: The Modern Troubles of a Giant: Sony Ericsson [print this page] Author: Simon Drew Author: Simon Drew
Sony Ericsson stands as one of the most promising joint ventures the mobile industry has ever seen. This is why it is utterly disappointing to see the company having problems and setbacks. Still, despite the many problems, Sony Ericsson is still pushing forward with its innovative and future-thinking products. It is no surprise that they are still the fourth largest mobile phone manufacturer in the world. Individually, Sony Corporation and Ericsson are major companies that have many years of production and innovation experience behind them. The joint venture between their mobile divisions brings together the best that each can offer. Two of a Whole Ericsson is a Swedish company that has been in the telecommunications industry for almost a century (starting late in the 1800s). They provide telecommunication and data communication services as well as cable TV and IPTV. Prior to the joint venture with Sony, they have been a very successful mobile phone company as well. Sony Mobile is a small portion of the much larger Sony Corporation. Sony has long been credited for its innovations and advancements in the field of media storage and playback equipment. They originally pushed both the Betamax and VHS formats as well as the development of the Walkman and Cybershot series. Right now, Sony also heavily supports the usage of the Blu-Ray disc format; a move that has forced even Microsoft to abandon the HD-DVD. Combined Effort The catalyst that begun the joint venture started with the closure of a Philips manufacturing facility. This said facility supplied chips for both Nokia and Ericsson. While Nokia was easily able to find a new source, Ericsson was not as fortunate. This left the Swedish company unable to manufacture sufficient phones to meet the demand. At this time Sony mobile was not doing so well either. The Japanese mobile company only had a small 1% share of the industry. It came as to no surprise that later that year, talks about a joint-venture begun and shortly after, Sony Ericsson formally announced the deal. Recent Troubles Despite the illustrious backgrounds of the two companies, they were not without problems. In fact, they were not able to gain a solid foothold in the mobile industry until two years after the venture began (when they finally gave up on CDMA devices and concentrated on GSM phones). Anyway, just recently, one of their major smart phones, the XPERIA X2, got delayed to a January launch. While this would have been major news, compared to their more recent problems, a slight delay is already a good thing as far as SE is concerned. November of 2009 saw to suspension of sales of the SE Satio, a multimedia Symbian smart phone. Despite the heavy marketing and hardware advantages of the device, it had a lot of bugs and firmware issues that got so widespread that Carphone Warehouse and Phones4U pulled it off shelves for a while. The problem was later fixed with a software patch. Also, before the Satio pull out, Sony Ericsson announced that the company would be shutting down facilities in Lund and India, as well as removing 2000 workers from employment. This coincided with the closure of several offices in the United States.About the Author:
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