Sony Mobiles and the art of self destruction

Just over a decade ago, Sony was selling more than 100 million smartphones a year. Ever since Apple iPhone came out, Sony’s sales fell so much that they cannot even sell 10 million smartphones a year and have recently cut down mobile workforce by half. What went wrong? Well, everything! Read On to know!

Back in 2001, Sony’s mobile unit merged with Ericsson’s to create Sony Ericsson. T68i and T100/200 were one of the first phones from Sony Ericsson and they were instant hit. As a matter of fact, the T100 was my first ever mobile phone. It looked way better than competing phones from Nokia at that time and was also better in features. From the beginning, Sony Ericsson’s target was to make powerful multimedia and camera phones. What followed was legendary. Sony Ericsson launched phones that truly revolutionized smartphones many times over. Then, Apple announced the iPhone. And the world crashed around Sony (Ericsson).

Here are few reasons why Sony failed spectacularly!

Lack of variety

Back in the 2000s Sony was never afraid to experiment and bring out phones that truly had that unique factor and oomph. Listed below are three phones that were released between 2009 and 2019. Apart from getting more shine and less button, there has been barely any innovation. While the world moved towards truly bezel less display, Sony was working on making their phone’s back side more shiny. Back in those days, there was lot of variety that made Sony (Ericsson) stand apart. Be it joystick on T68i and K series, Orange accesnts and Walkman features on W series, Xperia Play gaming phone, cybershot series with great cameras, Sony (Ericsson) stayed ahead of the game and they captured premium market in many regions. Now, Sony phones are lost in sea of truly gorgeous and unique phones (pop up cameras, pin hole cameras, bezel less displays, ultrasonic fingerprint, IR camera etc).

Lack of living room integration

Sony’s strength lies in living room entertainment. They still make one of the best TVs, music systems. They also make really high quality cameras that compete with Canon and Nikon to create media that can be consumed in living room. And yet, they were never able to crack the ultimate tool box. While Apple, Amazon and Google moved forward to get the upper hand in living room, Sony started going backwards and started losing out in TV and entertainment industry too. All Sony had to do was to bring all their divisions together to create the ultimate living room IoT setup.

Poor management

Sony management jumped on Android bandwagon earlier than most companies that sell smartphones today and they had vast experience to make it count. Brands like Vivo, Oppo, Mi did not even exist back then. Yet, they failed spectacularly mainly due to management that could not understand the dynamics of smartphone market.

Sony’s products scream premium quality and they last long. There was a time when a Sony product at home was looked at like how current world looks at you if you get an iPhone. Sony had immense pool of talent and they failed to make use of this talended group of engineers. Instead of steamrolling competition, they ended up with few wins here and there.

Understanding market pulse

Sony’s phones come with top of the line audio quality and amazing cameras. Many brands use Sony’s camera modules and they act like they make the best camera phones in the world. Sony on the other hand could not create the right buzz even though they had much better functional phones. When Vivo entered India, they painted the country blue and made everyone believe that they make best camera and music phones. Sony were the ones who made best music and camera phones and were nowhere to be seen. You can rarely find a banner of Sony. Sony has ‘Sony World’ centres across India and they failed to create any buzz when a new Sony phone came out. Sony’ management did not understand the balance between price and features.

Had Avengers Infinity War came out couple of years ago, had Sony management saw the scene where Thanos explained how everything should be balanced, we may have had a better Sony.

Overpricing

Back in 2000s Sony (Ericsson) phones came with right balance of price and features. Some were more expensive but they came with premium headphones and other extras. Sony either made cheap phones that are useless and made amazing phones that are grossly overpriced. Sony would say ‘first phone with 4K display’ and price it so high that buyers would feel ‘hey, we can pay less for an iPhone’. Sony’s tendency to price their products high is a major reason for their downfall. Even when Samsung was steam rolling Sony in Europe and Asia, Sony would not reduce pricing of their products. Even when Chinese started taking over midrange and premium segments, Sony did not budge. Even today, Sony would not budge.

Sony’s most famous lineup of phones

K series

This was the first superhit camera phone series. At a time when we had mediocre cameras and monochrome displays, Sony Ericsson came up with this brilliang K750 that had a color display and 2mp camera. The phone was instant hit and most of K series phones were truly spectacular.

W series

That was the time when Nokia totally dominated the industry. When Sony Ericsson released the first W series phone, Nokia had to go back to drawing board and create multimedia centric lineup. It all started with W800 that brought Sony’s iconic Walkman brand to mobile phones. Like K series camera phones, most of W series music phones made a mark in the industry.

P series

At the advent of touch screens, Sony came up with P series phone that comes with powerful internals and large touchscreen interface. P series was mainly targeted at business users. The P series of phones were not as successful as the K series or W series as Nokia and other brands had better business phones.

Xperia Series

After the dawn of iPhone, Sony started Xperia series of Android smartphones that continue to this date. The Xperia, though was great at the beginning started to become stale as the design rarely changed.