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Sony's Mobile Business Is Shrinking Out of Existence (theverge.com)
The latest earnings report from Sony indicates the company's already tiny smartphone business has shrunk by almost half. "In the quarter ending in July 2018, Sony managed to sell only 2 million mobile devices, down 1.4 million from the same period in the proceeding year," reports The Verge. From the report: In its 2017 accounting year, Sony sold 13.5 million phones, and back in April its modest estimate for 2018 was 10 million, but now that's been revised down to 9 million. Anticipating it will make only $5.49 billion of mobile sales for the entire fiscal 2018, Sony is now in a close contest with HTC for the title of being the least relevant global Android device vendor. At least BlackBerry has its promise of uniquely secure phones and keyboards with actual, physical buttons on them. Sony's signature mobile feature in recent times has been an insistence on shipping massive bezels for way too long. It's important to note that while Sony's mobile business is hurting, Sony as a whole is in good financial health.
play to their strengths...
They just need to make a app/phone that can play old playstation games and link via bluetooth as a controller for the PS4
a standard screen (just HD for battery life) a HUGE battery combined with a awesome camera and they would have a winner
having google playstore then a seperate app for playstation games would be a killer
they tried previously but had no specific games/emulator so it became sidelined... Sony Ericsson Xperia Play lost out to the vita... kill the Vita and do a app/store
The fetishes of smartphone reviewers never made sense to me.
I had a SEMC Xperia Play. Still have it, in fact. Sony promised that all Xperia devices shipping at that time would get ICS. Then they released ICS roms for literally every device BUT the Play. They claimed it would be too hard to do. Well, people on XDA-Developers got it working, more or less. Unfortunately, IIRC the Playstation emulator which was the primary purpose behind the phone only works on Gingerbread, although XDA-Devs may have solved that problem as well by now. The touch pad game controller support was also a little wonky.
Since Sony has demonstrated that they are liars, I will not buy any more devices from them, and they cannot stop selling them soon enough for me.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The Xperia Compact phones are the only decent size phones with decent specs. Larger phones are a colossal pain since dealing with the extra weight and size is not worth it when I don't use the phone to consume media, browse the web much (maybe when I am not right near a computer, but that is it), or spend the day on social media apps. In decreasing order of importance, I need a phone that: makes phone calls, lets me text, acts as a hotspot, has GPS/maps for navigation, and a browser for the occasional quick search on the go. I don't need a Galaxy whatever or a phone with a ~6.5 inch display for that.
The Xperia Compact phones are a bit overpriced for what you get, but they are otherwise very high quality and nice to use. Every other phone I have seen with a ~4.5 inch display is rubbish (assuming you can even find a current year model, as that is getting to be more difficult), and every other decent phone nowadays is ~5.5 or larger.
I really hope they manage to stick around since they are servicing a part of the market nobody else seems to be interested in servicing.
Sony became dead to me as a phone manufacturer when they started permanently crippling the *camera* if you unlock the bootloader. Fuck Sony.
...which has great battery life even after 4 years of continuous heavy usage.
The new versions of the phones come with no RAW support and a disabled fingerprint scanner so my next buy won't be a Sony phone.
If I am paying top money for a phone I at least expect it have the same feature set as comparably priced phone regardless of whether of often I end up using those features.
Android created this problem and now has a solution...
Android 8.0 re-architected the Android OS framework (in a project known as Treble) to make it easier, faster, and less costly for manufacturers to update devices to a new version of Android. In this new architecture, the HAL interface definition language (HIDL, pronounced "hide-l") specifies the interface between a HAL and its users, enabling the Android framework to be replaced without rebuilding the HALs.
If they used Treble this problem would go away...
Sony sensors are still found in most phones nowadays. It is just sad that the xperia brand name is no longer great.
I never have understand the craze around all-glass phones, or phones without borders, or trying to maximize glass. I loved the touchpad trackball buttons that were embedded in the bottom middle that let you navigate menus and select/click, i liked soft-keys for back/home/menu/etc, now what is there? I heard iphone or whatever even removed the audio jack or something. And these wacko charging systems that aren't mini USB. New phones force piles of preinstalled and difficult to remove junk on you. I haven't found a phone that's interesting or worth buying in like 8 years, try as I might with all the new stuff, it's all the same. I hate how phones have evolved, but at least sony phones have a space on the phone that's safe to hold without touching the screen. If they add some more kind of buttons it would look perfect to me.
Mind if you move those away? They're blocking the movie screen!
Shotty camera for way too long, and no camera2 api after 5-6 years of user complaints! If the Xperia dies, Sony, and Sony alone, is to blame.
SONY if any of you remember infected North America (hello to my friendly American neighbors from the great white north).
Given that they have attacked, without punishment, both our nations, I hope the fuckers fry in hell.
Far as I'm concerned their corporate charter should have been yanked, the CEO and board members frog marched to prison. Why that didn't happen to them, to Monstanto, to Equifax, to Nestle, to...jesus I think I'd hit the text limit if I kept naming all these crap lords that keep screwing us and not a damned thing happens to them?
My experience with a sony phone is that the build quality is very good, but the phones are riddled with bloatware that one cannot remove. No, this doesnt include "carrier bloatware" - I buy my phones direct.
If they make a phone with stock android and without the crap, then ill be open to buying it. until then.....
In some ways similar to the blackberry great product, almost built too good. Everyone I know that buys Sony phones buys them because they're rock solid products, and keeps them way longer then the normal mobile phone vendor. I'd says most people keep them 3 years. ON PAR with Apple. Way better then LG and even Samsung. In part my guess about small numbers is they're on a different refresh cycle, generally I have swapped every 2 or three generations. The feature I like the most is that they are a multi day battery. Great for travel. And BTW the way for those that say that they don't like that they're slightly heavier, use it for a week and you'll realize that the weight is actually perfect. There is such a think as too lite.
lol /. readership
you must be new here.
Sony's small - but still powerful - Compact phones are great.
I suspect the problem is that people just keep using them, like I do, seeing no need to upgrade.
I have a Sony phone, and Xperia A1, and it is horrible. The touchscreen has numerous issues and spots that do not pick up touchh very well all around the edges, including my home button. I would not recommend the phone to anyone and I will not buy another Sony phone after getting the runaround from support.
It's sad that $5.49bil in sales is considered "small." In any other consumer electronics business, that's HUGE.
All Sony mobiles last year had a jack port and no Sony mobiles this year does, and sales are halved? Of course the have also been more lax on updates, in general making it had to remain a Sony mobile fan
They had a playstation emulator with no exclusives i.e. no specific games
They had no specific playstation emulator that emulated ps1 or ps2
I had a Xperia Play given to me by google and the hardware was great however the software was terrible.
Sony is now in a close contest with HTC for the title of being the least relevant global Android device vendor.
Er, well if you are global you are still kinda relevant, no?
Is that something like "least athletic olympian"?
Here goes the last source of compact, but full-spec phones. I guess I will hold to my XZ1 Compact for a long time.
This is a damn shame.
I went through many Sony phones (SonyEricsson K610 & P1i, Sony Xperia Z2 & Z5) and found them well built, with long battery life time and nice to use.
While I'm very likely to keep my current Z5 until next September, the next one would have been a default to one of the new XZ(4?) series.
Maybe me and similar-inclined people are just going too long (3-4y is too long?) without a refresh to keep their Mobile business side going?
On a similar note, why are MediaMarkt/Saturn in Western Europe stopping to carry Sony phones? A damn shame.
I didn't even know that Sony sold phones. But their reputation is such that I assume they don't use real SD cards (you'd have to use some proprietary Sony memory stick instead), don't use USB (you'd have to use some weird proprietary Sony "lightning" cable), don't have headphone jacks (you'd have to use some weird proprietary Sony cable or wireless standard) and they can't talk to the cell networks without a special Sony-phone-compatible transceiver that you carry in your other pocket.
I'm not exaggerating about my prejud--no wait--my postjudice. This is what Sony taught me. I'm not saying I couldn't be persuaded to buy stock or something like that, but as a user companies like Sony, Apple, and Nintendo always look like particularly bad choices that only a masochist would be able to tolerate. Not even Microsoft, the company best known for unusually-below-average quality, is as repulsive or automatic-No-getting.
Sony is HORRIBLE at software. Look at their PS OS from DAY ONE. Designed by engineers given a task list - minimal checklist - works and tested - beyond that, nothing.
Could it be that being a media company is incompatible with making good un-crippled electronics.
They went from older style square phones with big bezels, headphone jacks etc to the polar opposite of that.
I have dealt with Sony's customer service. One of the things that keeps me going is wanting to see Sony die before I do.
I used sony z3 compact and really like the features. water proof, button placement, gimmicky camera features, solid body and regular updates until it lasted. it supposedly even had dock stand which I never saw though. wish they focused on long battery life, water proof, compact phones with flagship specs. they are capable of building an ecosystem with their products like apple or samsung is trying to do with their products.