As had been predicted in some prescient quarters, Sony has bought out Ericsson's share of the pair's Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications handsets joint venture. The Swedish vendor, which has shifted its focus to services in recent times, will receive a €1.05 billion (US$1.46 billion) cash payment for its troubles. For its part, Sony sees the move as a way of better exploiting its content-related assets in the smartphone arena and integrating its smartphones more closely into the respected Sony-branded family of consumer electronics devices. (See Sony Acquires Ericsson's Share of JV and Euronews: Ericsson Could Quit Handsets.)
France Telecom's U.K. joint venture with Deutsche Telekom AG (NYSE: DT), which corrals the Orange UK and T-Mobile (UK) brands into a thing called Everything Everywhere Ltd. (EE) , had a mixed picture to report in its third-quarter financials: Termination rate cuts contributed to a 4.3 percent year-on-year drop in its revenues, but there are encouraging signs of a shift away from pre-paid to post-paid for the operator, with 185,000 more customers opting to sign up to contracts in the quarter. (See Everything Everywhere Shrinks in Q2 and CEO Quits Everything Everywhere.)
Definitely no surprise that this has finally happened from a financial perspective, but Ericsson has always cited the advantages of having access to handset development for its overall strategy, so is this really in its best interests?
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