This is definitely only a rumor for now, but as we've seen before, Sony Ericsson rumors do have some truth involved usually. It looks like Peter Chou, the CEO of Taiwanese smartphone manufacturer HTC said in an interview that HTC would be a good fit in a merger with Sony Ericsson.

Now, stopping to think about it, there is some truth to that. HTC manufactures handsets packed with advanced features and Sony Ericsson has already become popular in the music phone market and completed the acquisition of UIQ.

Both companies have great experience when coming to manufacturing mobile phones, and they are doing a great job at it, providing handsets that are very appreciated by customers. This is why a combination between the two would definitely be interesting.

Sony Ericsson is already a joint venture between the Japanese consumer electronics company Sony and Swedish telecomm company Ericsson. After their merger, both companies stopped making their own mobile phones, combined Sony's consumer electronics expertise with Ericsson's technological leadership in the communications sector, and started manufacturing phones under the Sony Ericsson brand, which turned out to be a great success on the market.

What HTC could bring into a partnership is their expertise on manufacturing smartphones, if there is to be such a partnership. But while it would be nice to get to see a HTC smartphone running UIQ, it's hard to imagine HTC giving up the Windows Mobile they have been using in most of their handsets.

Also, Sony Ericsson has recently announced that they are looking for licensees and shareholders for UIQ, and although not very likely, it's not impossible that HTC might consider switching to UIQ, at least in the case of a few of their devices. Keeping in mid that this is just a rumor, we can wait for more info to come out regarding the intentions of HTC and Sony Ericsson.