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??

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.

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

[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

[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

[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".

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.

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: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).