ST-Ericsson had been hemorrhaging money for many quarters. Indeed, it had never been profitable since being established in 2008, but it was particularly damaged by the negative fortunes of its big two customers, Sony-Ericsson (now entirely a Sony affair) and Nokia, which used ST-Ericsson chips in its low-end phones but never adopted the NovaThor system-on-a-chip (SoC) platform for its Windows Phones, as ST-Ericsson claimed it would back in 2011. Nokia’s Lumia handsets continue to use Qualcomm chipsets, as do most other high-end smartphones these days.
ST-Ericsson had only just unveiled its latest NovaThor chipsets last month at Mobile World Congress. However, a spokewoman for Ericsson told me that these new chipsets — namely the the L8540 and L8580 lines — are being immediately discontinued. The ageing U-series, such as the U8500 that was announced in 2011 and that still powers midrange devices such as the Samsung Galaxy SIII Mini, will continue under STMicro’s auspices, she added.
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