Sharp Corporation of Japan says it is selling off its 9.2% shareholdings in Pioneer Corp.

Currently Sharp is the largest shareholder on record in Pioneer with 30 million shares of Pioneer valued at 6.3 billion yen or US$63.80 million.

Back in 2007, the two firms made a partnership to jointly develop consumer electronics products. Now that seems like a luxury to Sharp, a luxury they can’t afford. So Sharp is looking for a buyer. The proceeds of the sale would help pay off Sharp’s corporate debt of $2.14 billion which is the equivalent to a Mt. Everest of LCDs.

Pioneer would continue to retain ten million shares or 0.8% shareholdings in Sharp.

Even with the divestment, the two companies would continue to partner on a smaller scale in fields such as optical discs.

Go Sharp Wants to Sell Pioneer Stake

As part of their theme at ISE (and to celebrate their 50 years of solving the puzzles of how to mount displays and projectors), Peerless-AV organised a Rubik’s cube challenge at ISE 2013 to find the quickest “problem solver” in the AV industry….

Open to all visitors on the Peerless-AV booth, the trial to complete this classic 80’s puzzle was proving to be beyond the ability of most –until the arrival of Karl Savage, Business Development Manager at Saville Audio Visual.

Karl completed the challenge with the cube behind his back, without looking, and considerably quicker than any other entrant.

Turns out that Karl is no stranger to this particular puzzle. He has taken part in a number of Rubrik’s Cube-related charity events (including one where 1414 school-children twisted their way into the Guinness World Record books by solving the Rubik’s Cube, at the same time in the same place).

Ericsson confirms the acquisition of Microsoft's Mediaroom IPTV business, a move making Ericsson the biggest IPTV and multi-screen solution provider, with over 25% market share.

The financial details of the deal are not available but Bloomberg suggests Mediaroom is worth up to $1 billion.

The sale confirms the Microsoft TV strategy-- the company says it is "dedicating all TV resources to Xbox in a continued mission to make it the premium entertainment service... whether on a console, phone, PC or tablet."

Ericsson plans to buy Microsoft's MediaRoom IPTV business Bloomberg reports-- an acquisition potentially worth up to $1 billion that could be announced in a few weeks' time.

MediaRoom appears to be fairly fairly solid unit, performance-wise, with steady annual sales of around $350 million for the past 3 years according to Raymond James & Associates.

Why would Ericsson want to acquire an IPTV unit? Being the biggest wireless network maker around, the company wishes to cater to carriers competing with cable, satellite and web-based providers. It also boost investment in software and services amid accelerating hardware competition. "[The acquisition] would make sense for Ericsson as it provides for a more complete offering," Exane BNP analysts tell Bloomberg. "Still, the technology started to get hyped about 10 years ago and may have reached its peak already, so [we] don’t see this as a growth market."