14 DAY TRIAL // Sagem, the French mobile phones manufacturer, was never associated with high-end phones, which was quite understandable as it seemed to produce only low to mid-end devices. Perhaps the collaboration with Porsche, that resulted in the creation of the P9521 and the P9522, was one of the few occasions when the company rolled out a really fancy phone. Even so, the devices it built for Porsche were not actually high-tech, with users paying most of the money not on the Sagem phone, but on the Porsche branding stamped on it.
As early as August, rumors started to circulate, saying that the Safran Group was about to sell Sagem Mobiles, but no names of potential buyers were available. More information on that has just been made public and, as it turns out, the rumors were accurate.
First of all, once the acquisition is complete, the Sagem name will disappear entirely from the market, which means that handsets bearing it will literally become a rarity. Sofinnova, the new owner of the company, clearly thought that there was little value associated with the Sagem brand.
The new owner decided that it would continue to act as an OEM, and make mobile phones for other handset makers and operators. On that note, Sagem has already made some of the low-end phones Sony Ericsson sold at one point or another, so this means that there is a chance you'll never know if your phone is made by Sagem and sold under Sony Ericsson branding or not.
Furthermore, Sofinnova will also focus, aside from producing phones, on developing innovative new products for the mobile industry, thanks to its new division. As far as the phones scheduled for release by the end of this year are concerned, it seems that some of them will arrive on the market as initially announced.
To sum up, the good news is that the innovative part sounds really good – but the bad news is that, if there were users out there expecting a Sagem model in particular to be launched, they might not get to purchase it anymore. We'll just have to wait and see what the future has in store for us.