Sony Mobile is not doing well. The Japanese sell a modest amount of smartphones and either lose or earn pennies. The company has decided to look for savings, and therefore intends to leave several other markets. Sony obviously does not want to get the world, but only to maintain its mobile department on the surface.


Sony is vegetating on the smartphone market

The situation of Sony on the mobile market has not been the best for a long time. Until recently, the Japanese were still trying to fight the competition at every possible step, but it generated only further losses. Sony decided to change the strategy and not only limited the portfolio, gently raising phone prices, but also resigned from operations in those regions that did not bring any profit .

Sony Xperia XZ2 / Fot. gsmManiaK

Sony Xperia XZ2 / Fot. gsmManiaK

The combination of all these factors has meant that sales of Sony smartphones have dropped significantly. The Japanese sell about 15 million phones a year – it's even symbolic. The biggest competitors are doing much better. It is enough to mention that in three months Huawei sold 6 million copies of the flagship of the Huawei P20 family, and Samsung delivered a month to market over 8 million pieces of Galaxy S9 smartphones. However, the strategy adopted by Sony brought a positive effect in the form of improving the financial condition . It is true that lower sales means lower revenue, but higher margins and reasonable savings have caused that quite often Sony ends individual quarters with (minimal) profit or only with a small loss. Recently something had to break again, because the Japanese began to look for further savings .

Sony Mobile will disappear from other markets

It turns out that Sony Mobile is getting ready to leave markets such as Turkey, Africa and the Middle East (South-West Asia). All activities in these countries and regions will be suspended and local branches liquidated. Apparently the matter will be settled already in October. This decision is not really surprising. Sony smartphones are relatively expensive and in the discussed areas were not likely to be sales hits. The Japanese have probably come to the conclusion that there is no sense in staying strong in this part of the world, so curling the interest here will be the best option. I remind you that this is not the first step taken by Sony. The manufacturer has already limited its operations in China and the USA.

Is the crisis getting worse?

Theoretically, the disappearance of Sony from Turkey, Africa and the Middle East should not seem very suspicious, but the combination of this message with recent rumors of unsatisfactory sales of Xperia XZ2 and Xperia XZ2 Compact may give food for thought. Looking at what is happening recently with Sony and the fans of the brand, who are increasingly starting to criticize the decisions made by the company, more and more often I start to suspect that the Japanese mobile department is getting worse . In a few weeks, we should get to know Sony's results for the second calendar quarter of 2018 and then we will see if my suspicions about the worsening of the crisis were right. https://www.gsmmaniak.pl/859492/sony-xperia-xz2-premium-cena/ Source: Evan Blass, own study