GREGORY FRAMEWORK OF TECHNOLOGY MANAGEMENT      PT2           1000W

How does the collaboration between Sony and Ericsson conducted

The initial of Sony is to look for a partner to explore the GSM and CDMA technologies. Sony had soft alliance with Qualcomm and Siemens in the 1990s. In the experience with Qualcomm, Sony developed CDMA technology together with Qualcomm, but products have been sold separated under two brand name. The competition leaded this soft alliance to the end as well as the collaboration with Siemens. However, Sony realized it’s a huge investment to conduct R&D alone in telecom technology. Before Sony and Ericsson arrived a Memorandum of Understanding, many partner candidates as Motorola, Alcatel and Nokia had been considered. At that time, Ericsson gained a big operation loss in 2000. And it was looking for a partner to take over the handsets operations. There were many potential candidates had been chose. Sony was one of them. Sony held the advantage of the multimedia consumer electronics expertise but had been limited on designing and innovations. Initially, Sony want to take over all the operation include the core technology, design, distribution and marketing. However, the top management of Ericsson didn’t want to abandon the core technology of handset, which was developed in Ericsson Mobile Platforms (EMP). Thus Ericsson proposed soft alliance which had been turned down by Sony who insisted the joint venture deal.

Ericsson

Sony

Original staff numbers in 2001 in Joint venture

3000

1500

Market knowledge – Telecom operating

valuable

Limited

Market Knowledge – multimedia consumer electronics

limited

valuable

Ha