The Formation and Evolution of Sony Ericsson Alliance - Assignment Example

The Formation and Evolution of Sony Ericsson Alliance Table of Contents Introduction of Sony Ericsson 3 References 5 Introduction of Sony Ericsson History of Sony Sony is one of the most dominating players in the electronics and telecommunication industry. The company was established as Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering Corporation (Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo K.K.) in 1946. In the next year, the head office along with the factory was shifted to Shinagawa, Tokyo. In 1955, the company came up with the first transistor radio in Japan and in 1960 it brought the first transistor television in the world.

The name ‘Sony’ was originated from the combination of the two words – SONIC (sound) and SONNY (small size) (Sony, n.d.). In 1968 the company brought the famous ‘Trinitron’ color TV. Over the past thirty years, Sony has created several innovative telecommunication and electronic products. In 1970, the company was listed in New York Stock Exchange (Sony, n.d.). Prior to that, it was listed in TSE (Tokyo Stock Exchange). At present, there are number of companies that are working under the holding company Sony Group.

In 2009, the company revealed its latest communicating message “make.believe” (Sony, n.d.). History of Ericsson Ericsson, on the other hand, is one of the oldest companies in the world of telecommunication. It was set up in 1876 by Lars Magnus Ericsson (Ericsson, n.d.). The Sweden based company, initially, was a mechanical engineering shop that started servicing various equipments and selling two signals telegraphs to Swedish railways and Televerket. In 1886, the first product catalogue was published by L. M. Ericsson.

By that time the company started producing alarm telegraphs, switching equipment, desk phones and wall phones (Ericsson, n.d.). Gradually, the company has become bigger in size in terms of its net profit and total number of employees. The company’s main plant was located in Stockholm. In 1956, more than half a million phones were ordered from the company. Its main customer was the Swedish PTT. In addition to that, products were sold in other countries like Brazil, Columbia, Denmark, Mexico and France.

Over the next years, the company has achieved significant success. In 2006, the company employed almost 63,781 people and the main markets where its products were sold were USA and China (Ericsson, n.d.). Sony Ericsson In April, 2001 it was announced that the two giants i.e. Sony and Ericsson are to be merged to form Sony Ericsson Mobile Communication Services. It was a joint venture whose main objective was to develop innovative mobile devices (BBC, 2001). As both the company was struggling to make enough profits from their mobile operations, they decided to form this joint venture.

Sony was likely to benefit from the huge customer base of Ericsson, whereas Ericsson was expected to be benefitted from the innovative and stylish product ranges of Sony (BBC, 2001). References BBC, 2001, Sony, Ericsson in mobile deal, BBC NEWS, [Online] Available at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/1294102.stm Accessed on May 14, 2011 Ericsson, No Date, The History of Ericsson, [Online] Available at: http://www.ericssonhistory.com/Default.aspx?epslanguage=EN Accessed on May 14, 2011 Sony, No Date, Corporate history, Sony Corp.

Info, [Online] Available at: http://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/CorporateInfo/History/history.html Accessed on May 14, 2011