Now this is a bit against the general tendencies of the global arena. In these difficult times companies usually unite, creating collaborations that allow them to combine resources and thus make survival easier. During the recent 10 or so years, a lot of companies have merged, both before and after the economic crisis, including large game developers like Squaresoft and Enix that came together to create Square Enix, and a large number of American banks. Sony seems to think otherwise, though, as we’ve long been getting rumours that the Japanese giant wanted to part ways with its Swedish partner. Now it’s official – Sony and Ericsson are getting divorced, and the procedure will take place sometime next summer.

If we take a retrospective look, we will see that Sony Ericsson doesn’t really have a very long history. Both Sony and Ericsson used to be present in the mobile market by themselves, with the latter one being pretty successful. Then in 2001, the two companies came together to create Sony Ericsson, which operated with some success until now. Although the company never really captured a significant part of the market, it did put out some very successful models, like the SE T610 and the K700i. Those models, along with some others, became extremely popular and sold in very high numbers. At the time, the company was notable for using joysticks for navigation instead of buttons, which were pretty convenient but weren’t exactly durable.

During the last few years, however, Sony Ericsson wasn’t in a very good shape. The phones were good but lacked character, while the latest Android models couldn’t keep up with HTC and Samsung in terms of sales numbers. Sony hopes to have greater success on its own, by implementing unification across all its different platforms, such as Bravia and PlayStation. We’ll have to wait and see, meanwhile there are still new Sony Ericsson models in the pipeline, so the company isn’t out of the game yet.

Source – Engadget