Sony has set its sights on being the next big name in smartphones and the first step towards that goal is dropping the "Ericsson" in their brand name.

Sony Corp. recently made an announcement stating that it will pay the 50% stake of Telefon AB L.M. Ericsson which amounts to US$1.47 billion. Through this amount, Sony bought "five essential patent families" via the intellectual property agreement between the two firms. According to Hans Vestberg, the President for Ericsson, this deal was the next "logical step" that both companies have come up with in order to be more competitive in this economy. This deal would allow Sony to incorporate the company's mobile products to other electronic devices such as PCs, TVs, laptops, etc. The joint venture between Sony and Ericsson celebrated their 10th anniversary last October, 2011. When the deal started to roll out in the beginning, it received a positive response and many consumers appreciated the devices created by this partnership. Nowadays, Sony Ericsson is not creating the same waves as before hence the strategic move.

After the split-up was announced, Sony remained mum about its future plans until now. Recently, Sony announced that their next move would be tackling Android technology in their smartphones. This announcement was posted in their blog stating that:

There have been a few questions here on the blog and in our support forums regarding our upgrade plans beyond Gingerbread. We can today confirm that we plan to upgrade the entire 2011 XperiaTM portfolio* to the next version of Android known as Android 4.0 or Ice Cream Sandwich. We are working on merging our current XperiaTM experience with the new features in Android 4.0. More detailed information regarding this upgrade, timing and global availability will be communicated in due course here on the blog.

Combining Android with Sony's consumer electronics expertise could be a start for their goal to once again reclaim their place in the smartphone market. Presently, Korean-based firm, Samsung is the biggest smartphone vendor in the world for this third quarter. Samsung has shipped a total of 24 million smartphones for the third quarter of this year while Sony Ericsson figures showed that it has shipped a total of 9.5 million smartphones.