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After a ten year partnership that started in 2001, Sony has announced that it will buy out Ericsson's share of Sony-Ericsson mobile for 1.47 billion dollars. The purchase mainly consists of “five essential patent families” that Ericsson held. Now that Sony has full control of those patent families, it opens up the opportunity to use them in other, non-mobile devices, of which Sony makes a couple. This isn't exactly coming out of left field considering rumors of the buy out have been floating around for a while now. Apparently, Sony sees this as an opportunity to catch up with its rivals, who are a little bit ahead at the moment. Ericsson sees this as an opportunity as well. In a release, Ericsson President Hans Vestberg said that they would use this opportunity to "enhance [their] focus on enabling connectivity for all devices, using [their] R&D and industry leading patent portfolio to realize a truly connected world."

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Sony is looking to buyout their partnership with Ericsson in an attempt to obtain complete control of the Sony Ericsson brand. The buyout would end a 50-50 joint venture between Sony and Ericsson that began a decade ago in 2001. The companies have been in discussions about the buyout for years, but sources say the deal is actually nearing completion. The deal would allow Sony to more effectively integrate the phones into their overall mobile product brand, which most prominently includes tablets and portal video game devices.

Ever since smart phones rose to prominence, Sony Ericsson has been lagging behind the rest of the mobile market. However, Sony is actually quite successful in parts of the mobile market; for instance, they're the only company to ever produce a successful portable gaming device that was able to directly compete with and survive Nintendo's portable gaming devices. It'll be interesting to see what Sony can do once they fully take the reins of their mobile phone division. Hopefully something better than the mediocre Xperia Play.

During an interview, Sony Ericsson CEO Bert Nordberg said, "There's a lot of smoke, and I tell you there must be a fire somewhere," regarding a PlayStation Phone. Sony has an extremely strong offering in the gaming market, and that's very interesting."

The existence of the mythical PlayStation Phone has been a rumor for many years now, though pictures of a possible prototype released into the wild a few weeks ago, along with potential specs for the device. Pictures of a PSP2 prototype also found their way into the wild last week, so it seems Sony is either hard at work attempting to dominate the portable market, or it's just that time of year when pictures of fake prototypes begin floating around the Internet.