Digital

Mobile manufacturer takeovers: Sony Ericsson and Google Motorola

By | Published on Thursday 16 February 2012

Sony Corp

More from the world of mobile, and Sony Corp has completed its acquisition of the mobile maker in which it has long been a partner, Sony Ericsson. The entertainment and consumer electronics giant announced it was buying Swedish mobile firm Ericsson out of the handset business last October, and the deal was finalised yesterday.

Confirming that fact, Ericsson said in a statement: “Ericsson has today completed the divestment of its 50% stake in Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications AB, including the broad IP cross-licensing agreement, jointly announced by Sony Corporation and Ericsson on October 27, 2011. This makes Sony Ericsson a wholly-owned subsidiary of Sony. The agreed cash consideration for the transaction is 1.05 billion euros”.

The completion of Sony’s buy out of the mobile maker follows last week’s news that Google’s acquisition of the Motorola handset manufacturing business had now been approved by competition regulators in both the US and Europe, though both indicated they would be watching carefully to see that the web giant did not abuse the patents it had acquired as part of the deal.

That purchase is still to be approved in China, where Google still has a base despite moving a big chunk of its Chinese operations to separately regulated Hong Kong in 2010. If the Chinese government objected to the Google Motorola acquisition it could throw a serious spanner into the works, though few expect them to do so, despite past tensions between the web firm and the authorities in China.



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