ST-Ericsson was a multinational manufacturer of

wireless Wireless communication (or just wireless, when the context allows) is the transfer of information between two or more points without the use of an electrical conductor, optical fiber or other continuous guided medium for the transfer. The mos ...

products and

semiconductor A semiconductor is a material which has an electrical conductivity value falling between that of a conductor, such as copper, and an insulator, such as glass. Its resistivity falls as its temperature rises; metals behave in the opposite way. ...

s, supplying to mobile device manufacturers. ST-Ericsson was a 50/50 joint venture of

Ericsson (lit. "Telephone Stock Company of LM Ericsson"), commonly known as Ericsson, is a Sweden, Swedish multinational networking and telecommunications company headquartered in Stockholm. The company sells infrastructure, software, and services in ...

and

STMicroelectronics STMicroelectronics N.V. commonly referred as ST or STMicro is a Dutch multinational corporation and technology company of French-Italian origin headquartered in Plan-les-Ouates near Geneva, Switzerland and listed on the French stock market. ST ...

established on 3 February 2009 and dissolved 2 August 2013. Headquartered in

Geneva Geneva ( ; french: Genève ) frp, Genèva ; german: link=no, Genf ; it, Ginevra ; rm, Genevra is the second-most populous city in Switzerland (after Zürich) and the most populous city of Romandy, the French-speaking part of Switzerland. Situ ...

, Switzerland, it was a

fabless Fabless manufacturing is the design and sale of hardware devices and semiconductor chips while outsourcing their fabrication (or ''fab'') to a specialized manufacturer called a semiconductor foundry. These foundries are typically, but not exclu ...

company, outsourcing

semiconductor manufacturing Semiconductor device fabrication is the process used to manufacture semiconductor devices, typically integrated circuit (IC) chips such as modern computer processors, microcontrollers, and memory chips such as NAND flash and DRAM that are ...

to foundry companies. Both Ericsson and STMicroelectronics appointed 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.

History

ST-Ericsson was formed on 3 February 2009 when STMicroelectronics and Ericsson completed the merger of

Ericsson Mobile Platforms Ericsson Mobile Platforms (EMP) was the name of a company within the Ericsson group that supplied ''mobile platforms'', i.e. the technological basis on which a cellular phone product can be built. The main office was in Lund, Sweden. EMP was on ...

and ST-NXP Wireless into a 50/50 joint venture. On 20 August 2008, STMicroelectronics and Ericsson announced their interest to merge their wireless semiconductor businesses. ST contributed its multimedia and connectivity products as well as their 2G/

EDGE Edge or EDGE may refer to: Technology Computing * Edge computing, a network load-balancing system * Edge device, an entry point to a computer network * Adobe Edge, a graphical development application * Microsoft Edge, a web browser developed b ...

platform and 3G offering. Ericsson contributed its 3G and

3GPP Long Term Evolution In telecommunications, long-term evolution (LTE) is a standard for wireless broadband communication for mobile devices and data terminals, based on the GSM/ EDGE and UMTS/HSPA standards. It improves on those standards' capacity and speed by ...

(LTE) platform technology. The merger followed an existing strategic co-operation between Ericsson Mobile Platforms and ST-NXP Wireless. Ericsson also had a venture with

Sony , commonly stylized as SONY, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. As a major technology company, it operates as one of the world's largest manufacturers of consumer and professional ...

called

Sony Ericsson Sony Mobile Communications Inc. ( ja, ソニーモバイルコミュニケーションズ株式会社) was a multinational telecommunications company founded on October 1, 2001, as a joint venture between Sony Group Corporation and Ericsson. I ...

during 2001–2012. On 11 December 2012, ST-Ericsson was on the brink of shutdown after its parent company

decided to move out of the JV, citing loss of market share due to ST-Ericsson failing to attain

Break-even Break-even (or break even), often abbreviated as B/E in finance, (sometimes called point of equilibrium) is the point of balance making neither a profit nor a loss. Any number below the break-even point constitutes a loss while any number above i ...

. Since ST-Ericsson came into being in 2009,

has slipped from 5 to 7 in global semiconductor firms' rakings. On 18 March 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. On 28 May 2013, ST-Ericsson announced that they would sell the assets and intellectual property rights for its mobile connectivity Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) to

Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California, Santa Clara, California. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the devel ...

for $90 million. On 5 August 2013 Ericsson (NASDAQ:ERIC) and STMicroelectronics (NYSE:STM) announced the closing of the transaction for the split up of ST-Ericsson. This follows the announcement the companies made on 18 March 2013 on the chosen strategic option for the future of the joint venture. Effective 2 August 2013 Ericsson has taken on the design, development and sales of the LTE multimode thin modem solutions, including 2G, 3G and 4G interoperability. ST has taken on the existing ST-Ericsson products, other than LTE multimode thin modems, and the GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System) connectivity solution sold to a third party, and related business as well as certain assembly and test facilities.

ST-NXP Wireless

ST-NXP Wireless, a joint venture made up of the wireless operations of STMicroelectronics and

NXP Semiconductors NXP Semiconductors N.V. (NXP) is a Dutch semiconductor designer and manufacturer with headquarters in Eindhoven, Netherlands. The company employs approximately 31,000 people in more than 30 countries. NXP reported revenue of $11.06 billion in 2 ...

, began operations on 2 August 2008. NXP and STMicroelectronics announced on 10 April 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 Koninklijke Philips N.V. (), commonly shortened to Philips, is a Dutch multinational conglomerate corporation that was founded in Eindhoven in 1891. Since 1997, it has been mostly headquartered in Amsterdam, though the Benelux headquarters is ...

, 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

had been formed in 2001 from

Ericsson Mobile Communications Ericsson Mobile Communications AB was a subsidiary of Ericsson, entirely focused on development of mobile phones (handsets). The major offices were located in Lund, Kumla, Raleigh, North Carolina and Lynchburg, Virginia. History Under the comman ...

during the European telecom crisis around the year 2000. It was a pure platform company after the transfer of all handset products to

SonyEricsson Sony Mobile Communications Inc. ( ja, ソニーモバイルコミュニケーションズ株式会社) was a multinational telecommunications company founded on October 1, 2001, as a joint venture between Sony Group Corporation and Ericsson. I ...

, later

Sony Mobile Sony Mobile Communications Inc. ( ja, ソニーモバイルコミュニケーションズ株式会社) was a multinational telecommunications company founded on October 1, 2001, as a joint venture between Sony Group Corporation and Ericsson. ...

. At the forming of ST-Ericsson, Ericsson Mobile Platforms had roughly 3100 employees. 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 The Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) is a third generation mobile cellular system for networks based on the GSM standard. Developed and maintained by the 3GPP (3rd Generation Partnership Project), UMTS is a component of the In ...

. Their main development centers were situated in Lund, Sweden and with other three developments centers in

Basingstoke Basingstoke ( ) is the largest town in the county of Hampshire. It is situated in south-central England and lies across a valley at the source of the River Loddon, at the far western edge of The North Downs. It is located north-east of Southa ...

(UK) and

Research Triangle Park Research Triangle Park (RTP) is the largest research park in the United States, occupying in North Carolina and hosting more than 300 companies and 65,000 workers. The facility is named for its location relative to the three surrounding citie ...

, North Carolina (US), and

Nuremberg Nuremberg ( ; german: link=no, Nürnberg ; in the local East Franconian dialect: ''Nämberch'' ) is the second-largest city of the German state of Bavaria after its capital Munich, and its 518,370 (2019) inhabitants make it the 14th-largest ...

(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 General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) is a packet oriented mobile data standard on the 2G and 3G cellular communication network's global system for mobile communications (GSM). GPRS was established by European Telecommunications Standards Inst ...

and

WCDMA The Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) is a third generation mobile cellular system for networks based on the GSM standard. Developed and maintained by the 3GPP (3rd Generation Partnership Project), UMTS is a component of the I ...

mobile standards. EMP and, Ericsson as a whole, donated resources to standardization bodies such as 3GPP, OMA, JCP and

OMTP The Open Mobile Terminal Platform (OMTP) was a forum created by mobile network operators to discuss standards with manufacturers of mobile phones and other mobile devices. During its lifetime, the OMTP included manufacturers such as Huawei, LG ...

Portfolio and mobile products

Before joining the joint venture,

ST Microelectronics STMicroelectronics N.V. commonly referred as ST or STMicro is a Dutch multinational corporation and technology company of French-Italian origin headquartered in Plan-les-Ouates near Geneva, Switzerland and listed on the French stock market. ST ...

' wireless division had been working on the

Nomadik Nomadik is a family of microprocessors for multimedia applications from STMicroelectronics. It is based on ARM9 ARM architecture and was designed specifically for mobile devices. On December 12, 2002, STMicroelectronics and Texas Instruments ...

application processor platform since the STn8800, which won the Microprocessor Report Analysts' Choice Awards in 2003. 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. October third, 2008 the predecessor

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. 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 High Speed Packet Access (HSPA) is an amalgamation of two mobile protocols—High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) and High Speed Uplink Packet Access (HSUPA)—that extends and improves the performance of existing 3G mobile telecommunica ...

. 1 November 2010 there were statements about a product named ''M700'' and it was said that this would deliver data speeds of 100Mbit/s downstream and 50 Mbit/s upstream. Starting 15 February 2011 the company presented a whole family of products: * 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, M5730, M5780, M7300, M7400 and M7450. * A series of combined products with both application processor and modem under the brand name ''

NovaThor NovaThor was a platform consisting of integrated System on Chips (SoC) and modems for smartphones and tablets developed by ST-Ericsson, a 50/50 joint venture of Ericsson and STMicroelectronics established on February 3, 2009. ST-Ericsson also sold ...

'' 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. The quarterly results for the fourth quarter 2012 states that the company has shipped 10.7 million units of U8500 during that quarter. 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

Incorporated in Switzerland and headquartered in Geneva, ST-Ericsson employed 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 Finland ( fi, Suomi ; sv, Finland ), officially the Republic of Finland (; ), is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It shares land borders with Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north, and Russia to the east, with the Gulf of Bo ...

, Germany, UK,

India India, officially the Republic of India ( Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the ...

, Singapore, China, Japan and

Korea Korea ( ko, 한국, or , ) is a peninsular region in East Asia. Since 1945, it has been divided at or near the 38th parallel, with North Korea (Democratic People's Republic of Korea) comprising its northern half and South Korea (Republi ...

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:St-Ericsson 2009 establishments in Switzerland 2013 disestablishments in Switzerland Electronics companies established in 2009 Defunct companies of Switzerland Defunct semiconductor companies Ericsson Fabless semiconductor companies Electronics companies disestablished in 2013 Telecommunications companies established in 2009 Semiconductor companies of Switzerland