ST-Ericsson

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ST-Ericsson
Type Joint venture
Industry Wireless Semiconductors
Fate Dissolved on 18 March 2013
Founded 3 February 2009
Headquarters Geneva, Switzerland
Key people Didier Lamouche (President and CEO)
Revenue Increase $1.7 billion USD (2011)[1]
Employees 5,000 (as of end 2012)
Parent STMicroelectronics (50%)
Ericsson (50%)
Website www.stericsson.com

ST-Ericsson is a Swiss manufacturer of wireless products and semiconductors, supplying to mobile device manufacturers.[1] ST-Ericsson is a 50/50 joint venture of Ericsson and STMicroelectronics established on February 3, 2009. Headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, it is a fabless company, outsourcing semiconductor manufacturing to foundry companies.

Both Ericsson and STMicroelectronics appoint four directors to the board with Hans Vestberg, President and CEO of Ericsson, serving as the Chairman of the Board and Carlo Bozotti, President and CEO of STMicroelectronics, as the Vice Chairman.

Contents

History [edit]

ST-Ericsson was formed on February 3, 2009 when STMicroelectronics and Ericsson completed the merger of Ericsson Mobile Platforms and ST-NXP Wireless into a 50/50 joint venture.

On August 20, 2008, STMicroelectronics and Ericsson announced their intention to merge their wireless semiconductor businesses. ST contributed its multimedia and connectivity products as well as their 2G/EDGE platform and 3G offering. Ericsson contributed its 3G and 3GPP Long Term Evolution (LTE) platform technology. The merger followed an existing strategic co-operation between Ericsson Mobile Platforms and ST-NXP Wireless.[2]

Ericsson also had a venture with Sony called Sony Ericsson during 2001-2012.

On December 11, 2012, ST-Ericsson was on the brink of shutdown after its parent company STMicroelectronics decided to move out of the JV, citing loss of market share due to ST-Ericsson failing to attain Break-even. Since ST-Ericsson came into being in 2009, STMicroelectronics has slipped from 5 to 7 in global semiconductor firms' rakings.[3] On March 18, 2013, the parent companies announced that the joint venture was to be closed down, with the parent companies taking over parts, but not all, of its operation and products.[4]

ST-NXP Wireless [edit]

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ST-NXP Wireless, a joint venture made up of the wireless operations of STMicroelectronics and NXP Semiconductors, began operations on August 2, 2008. NXP and STMicroelectronics announced on April 10, 2008 that they would combine their wireless operations in 2G, 2.5G, 3G, multimedia, connectivity and future wireless technologies. The combined venture was created from businesses that together owned significant portfolios of communication and multimedia patents.

Formerly a division of the semiconductor firm Royal Philips Electronics, NXP was established as an independent company in 2006. STMicroelectronics was formed in June 1987 by the merger of semiconductor companies SGS Microelettronica of Italy and Thomson Semiconductors, the semiconductor arm of France's Thomson.

Ericsson Mobile Platforms [edit]

Main article: Ericsson Mobile Platforms

Ericsson Mobile Platforms has been formed in 2001 from Ericsson Mobile Communications during the european telecom crisis around the year 2000. It was a pure platform company after the transfer of all handset products to SonyEricsson, later Sony Mobile. At the forming of ST-Ericsson, Ericsson Mobile Platforms had rougly 3100 employees.[5] Some of EMPs customers were Flextronics, HTC, LG, NEC, Sagem, Sharp and of course Sony Ericsson. The main focus in the company was for the eight years it existed, to develop a platform for UMTS.[6] Their main development centers were situated in Lund, Sweden and with other three developments centers in Basingstoke (UK) and Research Triangle Park, North Carolina (US), and Nuremberg (Germany). In addition, it had R&D, sales and customer support teams in Tokyo (Japan), Shanghai (China), Taipei (Taiwan), Seoul (South Korea), Grimstad (Norway) and Nuremberg (Germany). It provided mobile terminal technology to customers who wanted to develop and produce mobile phones for the GPRS, EDGE and WCDMA mobile standards. EMP and, Ericsson as a whole, donated resources to standardization bodies such as 3GPP, OMA, JCP and OMTP.

Portfolio and mobile products [edit]

Before joining the joint venture, ST Microelectronics' wireless division had been working on the Nomadik application processor platform since the STn8800, which won the Microprocessor Report Analysts' Choice Awards in 2003.[7] Likewise, the NXP part of the company had worked on a product named Nexperia. The Nomadik platform was chosen as a starting point for development of new application processors within the company.[8]

October third, 2008 the predecessor Ericsson Mobile Platforms showcased a handheld prototype for LTE (fourth generation of mobile telephony). At this time, the company stated that the technology would reach the market by roughly 2011.[9] In december 2009 the LTE-platform had a name: M710 and it was presented as a multimode-device that would also be able to handle HSDPA.[10] November 1st, 2010 there were statements about a product named M700 and it was said that this would deliver data speeds of 100Mbps downstream and 50 Mbps upstream.[11]

Starting february 15th, 2011 the company presented a whole family of products:[12][13][14][15]

  • A series of application processors under the brand name Nova such as A9600, A9540 and A9500.
  • A series of modem products under the brand name Thor such as M5720, M5780, M7300, M7400 and M7450.
  • A series of combined products with both application processor and modem under the brand name NovaThor such as T5008, U4500, U8500, L9540, L8540 and L8580.

Many of these products appear to have failed to reach the market. In the press release regarding the last product L8580 it is mentioned that U8500 has been mass produced and that L8540 is available in samples since the end of 2012.[15] The quarterly results for the fourth quarter 2012 states that the company has shipped 10.7 million units of U8500 during that quarter.[16]

ST-Ericsson’s Chinese subsidiary, T3G was acquired in December 2008 and has been developing platforms for the TD-SCDMA mobile standard since 2003.

Locations [edit]

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Incorporated in Switzerland and headquartered in Geneva, ST-Ericsson employs around 6,700 people worldwide, more than 85 per cent of whom work in R&D.

ST-Ericsson’s main centers are in France, Switzerland, Sweden, Finland, Germany, UK, India, Singapore, China, Japan and Korea.

References [edit]

  1. ^ a b "About us - General Information - ST-Ericsson". stericsson.com. Retrieved 24 February 2011. 
  2. ^ "Ericsson and STMicroelectronics to Create World Leader in Semiconductors and Platforms for Mobile Applications". stericsson.com. 2008-08-20. Retrieved 2013-02-12. 
  3. ^ Leila Abboud (2012-12-10). "STMicro to quit ST-Ericsson mobile chip venture". Reuters. 
  4. ^ "Ericsson and STMicroelectronics agree on strategic way forward for ST-Ericsson". Ericsson. 2013-03-18. 
  5. ^ Kroes, Neelie (2008). Case No COMP/M.5332 - ERICSSON / STM / JV (32008M5332). Luxemburg: Office for Official Publications of the European Communities L-2985 Luxembourg. Retrieved 2012-12-13. 
  6. ^ Kornby, Mikael (2005). "The EMP Story". Ericsson Review (1). Ericsson AB. Retrieved 2012-04-07. 
  7. ^ Glaskowsky, Peter N. (2003-12-09). "Microprocessor Report Announces Finalists for the Fifth Annual Analysts' Choice Awards". BusinessWire. Retrieved 2013-05-19. 
  8. ^ Muppala, Nalini Kumar (2009-09-11). "ST-Ericsson (Part 2): Diverse Offering". Sramana Mitra's One Million by One Million Blog. Retrieved 2013-05-19. 
  9. ^ Wessman, Johan (2013-10-03). "Vägen mot framtiden". Sydsvenskan. Retrieved 2013-05-19. 
  10. ^ "ST-Ericsson and Ericsson first to achieve LTE and HSPA mobility with a multimode device". 2009-12-15. Retrieved 2013-05-19. 
  11. ^ "ST-Ericsson enables pioneering video applications demonstration on a TD-LTE tablet". 2010-11-01. Retrieved 2013-05-19. 
  12. ^ "Changing the game: ST-Ericsson Unveils NovaThor™ Family of Smartphone Platforms Combining its Most Advanced Application Processors with the Latest Generation of Modems". 2011-02-15. Retrieved 2013-03-20. 
  13. ^ "ST-Ericsson announces new highly integrated LTE NovaThor platform". 2012-02-28. Retrieved 2013-03-20. 
  14. ^ "ST-Ericsson unveils ultrafast Thor M7450 LTE advanced modem with first single RF carrier aggregation solution". 2013-02-24. Retrieved 2013-03-20. 
  15. ^ a b "ST-Ericsson opens the way for a new era of smartphones and announces the world’s fastest, coolest integrated LTE Modem and Application Processor platform based on FD-SOI". 2013-01-08. Retrieved 2013-03-20. 
  16. ^ "ST-Ericsson reports fourth quarter 2012 financial results". 2013-01-30. Retrieved 2013-03-21. 

See also [edit]

External links [edit]

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