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.

Comments

simple make a playstation phone/app

[johnjones]

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

Re:simple make a playstation phone/app

[pete6677]

Sony has never been good at playing to their strengths, despite having numerous strengths. I don't expect this to suddenly change.

Re:simple make a playstation phone/app

[drinkypoo]

they tried previously but had no specific games/emulator so it became sidelined...

You have this 100% wrong. I have a SEMC Xperia Play and they had specific games/emulator. Specifically, they had a playstation emulator. Most (but not all) Playstation games will work with it, and there is a java-based tool for prepping them for the phone. They sold something like eight different games for the device, which you had to buy all over again for your phone even if you already had them for your Playstation, which is the actual reason the device failed in the marketplace.

Re:simple make a playstation phone/app

[Spamalope]

Strengths? So, make it require Sony Memorystick instead of SD, and use a proprietary interface to connect to anything - but one that's standard on Sony PCs. Then make sure the devices have the rootkit pre-installed.

Their strengths do revovle around making an unworkable and expensive walled garden, right??

Re:simple make a playstation phone/app

[jools33]

I suspect the problem is with Sony internal politics, SEMC do not work so closely with the playstation division, each division must make profits and so the customer ends up paying for this (or in this case just going to their competitors).

Re:simple make a playstation phone/app

[drinkypoo]

I suspect the problem is with Sony internal politics, SEMC do not work so closely with the playstation division, each division must make profits

Yeah, but it still boggles the mind that it makes more sense to SCE[AJ] to make nothing by not selling old Playstation games than to make something by charging a small amount for them to be sold on a SEMC platform — especially since most of them will work without modification, and buying it for XPlay didn't let you run it on any other platform legally. It did include the full ISO image, but it's not like those were hard to come by through "other" means at the time, so that's irrelevant in my book.

Re:simple make a playstation phone/app

[HornWumpus]

Sony phones have been able to remote screen your PS4 for _years_. Clip on a controller.

They have the phone with the world's best phone camera in it.

What they don't have is any American carrier partners.

Massive bezels

[Anonymous Coward]

The fetishes of smartphone reviewers never made sense to me.

Re:Massive bezels

[Anne Thwacks]

The fetishes of smartphone reviewers never made sense to me.

Bribes from Apple explain a lot.

As a member of a former Sony buying family, I can say with confidence - the problem is lack of bug fixes to the software. Massive show-stopping feature omissions which are never fixed is what drove us away.

We do not care about bezels, notches, thinness etc. But we wont buy phones without:

• dual SIM
• Removable battery
• removable SD card
• availability of cases, screen protectors
• standard headphone and charger connectivity

OK, so its probably ten years since anyone in the family bought a Sony - we consumers remember being shafted for a long time

If Sony (or anyone else) want to buy us back, then support for 3rd party OSes is the best bet, not because many will install one, but because it publically demonstrates abandoning the "we enjoy shafting our users" mentality.

It may have escaped your attention, but very few phone users are suckers these days, because they have all had several phones before. (Apple users don't count - they have always had the same phone each time).

Re:Massive bezels

[b0bby]

As a member of a former Sony buying family, I can say with confidence - the problem is lack of bug fixes to the software. Massive show-stopping feature omissions which are never fixed is what drove us away.

I have an Xperia X, and in general I like it. Sony has even been pretty good about pushing out updates. But I agree with you, there seem to be more bugs than I'd like, and one reason I find myself loading the update as soon as they land is I hope that it'll fix my laggy camera app or stop Waze from crashing or fix the bluetooth connection or whatever the issue de jour is.

I'll be getting a new phone soon, and it probably won't be a Sony.

Re:Massive bezels

[drinkypoo]

Sony were great once. They had a good range of VIAO laptop that were sought after in the 2000's here in the uk

VAIO laptops were flimsy AF and their driver support was second to everyone. They were garbage hardware with garbage support. What about that was popular in the UK?

Re:Massive bezels

[HornWumpus]

Xperia XZs (and successors) has all that except the removable battery, of course it's 'removable', everything is, just not easy.

Also has the best phone camera available and ruggedized.

They are rooted. Sony doesn't officially support it, but they haven't effectively locked them down.

Good.

[drinkypoo]

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.

Re: Good.

[Anonymous Coward]

Large firms are made of many smaller units that do not necessarily talk to each other effectively. Thus an instance of bad behaviour may reflect one unit, not corporate policy as a whole. In the case of PS and phone integration, that's a classic cross unit failure.

In other companies you see different business units creating overlapping products, or corporate buying in a company to provide a product, not realising that they already have one.

In essence, don't ascribe overarching bad intentions when it might be a limited amount of bad intentions (or failure to understand something is bad) combined with a failure of corporate self-knowledge.

What a disappointment

[El Cubano]

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.

Re:What a disappointment

[Falconhell]

I bought an Xperia Z3 for $120 new on eBay recently to use as a flight computer in a glider.
Its a great unit.

Re:What a disappointment

[ftobin]

I'm totally with you on the Xperia Compact. It has been a great small phone. It has been getting updates for more than two years beyond the release date, too!

Re:What a disappointment

[SeaFox]

>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.

They're already screwing that up. Did you see the current-year's model? Increasing the screen size in a way nobody wants, increasing the weight, and removing the headphone jack.

Re:What a disappointment

[Actually, I do RTFA]

A bigger screen means a bigger phone. A bigger phone is a bigger battery. Which means longer life.

If you just want to make calls, be a hotspot, and have GPS, get a flipphone. The battery lasts days.

Re:What a disappointment

[El Cubano]

If you just want to make calls, be a hotspot, and have GPS, get a flipphone. The battery lasts days.

I usually get 5-7 days of battery life before I have to charge. Occasionally it will drop to 2-3 if I am on the road a lot using GPS and/or hotspot continually. I find that the smaller phone does just fine with the smaller batter. Those bigger phones with bigger batteries have to use it all to power the bigger screen.

Re:What a disappointment

[quantaman]

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.

My Xperia has been losing touch sensitivity near the edge of the screen, but one-off anecdotes are hardly a basis on which to judge hardware quality.

But I do agree the compact smartphone market is sorely under served.

If I wanted a tablet I'd buy a tablet, I don't need a giant screen to read webpages or look at a map. I get why the giant phones exist, but I don't see why no one is interested in making compact smartphones.

Re:What a disappointment

[Actually, I do RTFA]

The battery increases linearly with area. The screen energy usage increases more slowly than that.

Re: What a disappointment

[DutchMasterKiller]

This, and overheating for no reason. Z5c. Fell of settee, back glass shattered, had it replaced and couldn't use flash on the camera anymore as it created a green glow on the picture. Liked the size etc but never buy a Sony phone again. It slid of bedside table and back glass shattered again. I have ductaped the back now but it ended in the draw and bought a Redmi 4x ðY'

Re:What a disappointment

[Luckyo]

Problem appears to be Asian markets, where phones below 5,5" will not sell. And phone companies sell more in China than anywhere else in the world.

Re: What a disappointment

[Anne Thwacks]

I'd be happy with a decent e-ink display

You'll never get it - that is a sensible option. The phone industry does not do "sensible".

Re:What a disappointment

[gshegosh]

I was going to write exactly that. Sony has virtually cornered below-5-inches market segment. I loved my Z3 compact until its touchscreen failed after 3 years of use. I've just upgraded to XZ1 compact and keep loving the device. It's a perfect form factor for me, screen estate is enough and being just 720x1280 pixels it saves power. All phone's specs are decent, it has a great GPS, is fast, etc. I've searched high and low for another phone below 5 inches, but there are almost none. It would be bad luck if Sony got out of smartphone business :( On the other hand, XZ2 compact tries to cram 5-inch screen into previous dimensions and it makes it thiiick. So maybe they get lost, too. Which is sad. I guess I will have to buy 1 or 2 spare XZ1s ;)

Re:What a disappointment

[hadrianb]

Yes, I completely agree with everything you wrote. Those are precisely the reasons why I have bought two Xperia Compact until now (an X Compact 2 years ago and an XZ2 Compact with SDM845 this year).

While many people seem to like large smartphones and small laptops, I only use large laptops and small smartphones (small enough to fit comfortably in a shirt pocket).

I am always looking for good small smartphones, with up to 5 inch screen size, but I was not able to find any acceptable alternative to Xperia Compact.

I am using them for exactly the same activities listed by you, plus a few high-resolution photos & movies from time to time.

I do not use Google services, I do not have a Google account, but I use only the applications which came with the phones plus a few others written by myself and loaded on them with adb.

Xperia Compact are perfectly adequate for that and I have been very content with them.

Now I might buy another XZ2 Compact, to have a backup for the case when they would decide to discontinue the Compact line of products and no other vendor would offer something similar.

Re:What a disappointment

[qbast]

I was replacing Z3 Compact about 3 months ago and decided to get XZ1 Compact instead of newest version. For the exact reasons you are listing (except for headphone jack that I don't use anyway)

Re:What a disappointment

[Daetrin]

I was going to say the same thing. I'm using a Sony Xperia X Compact right now and it's pretty good. I liked the 1st generation Moto X more, but Motorola decided to stop making good compact phones for some reason, so here i am.

Also, i like headphone jacks and bezels on my phone. If Sony sticks with getting rid of those or just shuts down the mobile division entirely i'm going to be in a very unfortunate position when i need to get another phone =/

Re:What a disappointment

[arth1]

They're already screwing that up. Did you see the current-year's model? Increasing the screen size in a way nobody wants, increasing the weight, and removing the headphone jack.

Also, replacing the flat back that allowed you to use the phone while placed on a table with a bulging back that rolls in every direction, making the phone super-wobbly.

I have an XZ1 Compact, and the hardware is great. It's my fourth Sony, after the W800, P and ZL. But the main reason I probably won't buy Sony again is that they remove existing features in new models.

The W800 could play gapless music, had a replaceable battery, and a camera lens cover. The P didn't.
The P had an RGBI display with much higher contrast that actually worked in sunlight, and hardware touch button areas for back/home/menu. The ZL didn't.
The ZL had an IR port for use as a remote control, and support for NFC tags. The XZ1 didn't.

This isn't just a phone thing, but seems to be the case for other Sony products too. The Playstations have been "dumbed down" several times, with removal of features like Linux. The second generation PSP lost the gorgeous OLED display. The successor, Vita, could not be hooked up to a TV. Then there's BD players which suddenly could not play Super Audio CDs like earlier models - now you have to buy a prosumer player to get that.

In 50 years, Sony presumably will be selling bricks. Gorgeous bricks, but they won't be capable of actually doing anything. And they'll wobble.

Try not crippling the camera if rooted

[Miamicanes]

Sony became dead to me as a phone manufacturer when they started permanently crippling the *camera* if you unlock the bootloader. Fuck Sony.

Re:Try not crippling the camera if rooted

[gauntlet420]

Further to this, they also refuse to unlock the bootloader if the phone was originally carrier-locked, even if the phone is out of warranty. My Xperia Z2 is now a boat-anchor because of (1) a badly bloated stock O/S and (2) locked bootloader which cannot be unlocked other than by paying an exorbitant fee to the original carrier, with whom I don't even do business. I would have gladly kept using the phone were I able to run custom firmware on it. The camera was really good, as was the microphone - I could record clips at live shows and concerts and get *really* decent audio from this phone. My current G5 makes recordings which sound like messed-up McDonalds' drive-through-speakers.

Re: Try not crippling the camera if rooted

[Miamicanes]

Until VERY recently, it was often the only way to get a top-shelf Android phone capable of doing LTE in the US (esp. VoLTE & transparent wifi calling/sms).

problem was with android...

[johnjones]

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...

Selling 10mil phones is still a lot

[Nocturrne]

It's sad that $5.49bil in sales is considered "small." In any other consumer electronics business, that's HUGE.

Re:Selling 10mil phones is still a lot

[HideyoshiJP]

Modern business: "If you ain't first, you're last."

100% right

[johnjones]

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.

Re:100% right

[drinkypoo]

That's not what the word specific means.

hmm

[cascadingstylesheet]

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"?

Damn

[qbast]

Here goes the last source of compact, but full-spec phones. I guess I will hold to my XZ1 Compact for a long time.

Re:Their phone camera sensor is still relevant

[HornWumpus]

Their second tier sensors. To get their best sensor you have to buy a sony phone.

features

[arunvk]

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.