Ericsson and STMicro complete wind-down of joint venture

Ericsson and STMicroelectronics have completed the break-up of their loss-making chipset joint venture ST-Ericsson, with Ericsson taking on the design, development and sales of LTE multimode thin modem solutions and STMicro acquiring existing ST-Ericsson products other than the LTE multimode thin modems and a global navigation satellite system product sold to a third party.

About 1,800 employees of the joint venture have joined Ericsson and 1,000 have joined STMicro. Ericsson and STMicro have taken on the expenses and margin of their respective parts of the organisation since March.

STMicro last month reported a loss of US$152 million (€114 million) on the venture for the second quarter and separately announced that it was to invest about €2 billion in partnership with the French government to develop a new line of microprocessors for smartphones, TV set-tops and home routers.