We’re happy to announce that nearly four months after we first reported Sony’s intent to purchase Ericsson’s half of Sony Ericsson for a hair over 1 billion Euros the deal is now officially done. Sony Ericsson will be renamed Sony Mobile Communications, the company will have offices in Beijing, Lund, Silicon Valley, and Tokyo, it will be headquartered in Longon, and it’ll be made up of roughly 8,000 employees. The guy in charge will be Bert Nordberg, the same guy who has been the CEO of Sony Ericsson since September 2009. The company’s first product will be the Xperia S that we saw announced at the Consumer Electronics Show last month, but it wouldn’t be fair to call it a Sony smartphone since it was pretty much done by the time Sony took control of Sony Ericsson. Now here’s where the fun begins. Yesterday we filed a report saying Sony might make smartphones and tablets based on the same operating system as the PlayStation Vita. If they’re really serious about that, then those devices are essentially two years away from fruition.
The bigger question is what will Sony do differently now that they’re in charge? It’s not like Sony Ericsson was doing all that bad. They stopped making feature phones last year and focused exclusively on Android smartphones. Besides the Vita OS, what other operating systems do you think the company is considering? More importantly, how will Sony bundle their content and services with devices to make something attractive enough to sway consumers away from Samsung’s devices and the holier than holy iPhone?
All we know is this: Sony makes absolutely drop dead gorgeous hardware, so we’re stupendously excited to see what they’ll come out with over the coming years. If anyone can match or exceed Apple on industrial design, it’s Sony.
[Via: The Verge]