The story
ST-Ericsson was formed on 3 February 2009 when STMicroelectronics and Ericsson completed the merger of Ericsson Mobile Platforms 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 its 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.
Ericsson also had a venture with Sony called Sony Ericsson during 2001–2012.
On 11 December 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.
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 it would sell the assets and intellectual property rights for its mobile connectivity Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) to Intel 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.
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Ericsson Mobile Platforms
Ericsson Mobile Platforms had 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 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. Their main development centers were situated in Lund, Sweden and with other three developments centers in Basingstoke (UK), 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.
From Wikipedia’s article on ST-Ericsson, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4