STMicroelectronics exits joint venture ST-Ericsson

The Swiss company STMicroelectronics wants to exit the joint venture with Ericsson. ST-Ericsson still makes processors for mobile devices; Samsung’s Galaxy S III Mini, among others, has an ST-Ericsson soc on board.

STMicroelectronics plans to sell its stake in the joint venture next year and is negotiating terms with Ericsson. Ericsson say that it seeks an ‘appropriate strategic solution’ to the situation. The company does not yet want to make any announcements about what it will look like. STMicroelectronics wants out of the joint venture to save costs; at the moment he is still losing money.

ST-Ericsson’s mobile processors are a combination of STMicroelectronics CPUs and Ericsson baseband chips. The European collaboration has several large customers: Samsung used the Novathor processors in its Galaxy S Advance and Galaxy S III Mini, Sony put them in the Xperia P and Xperia Sola, among others. Nokia also wants to work with Novathor processors, but has no chance to do so: Microsoft is currently only making drivers for Qualcomm processors in Windows Phone.