When was the last time you saw a Sony phone?
Just a few days ago, accompanied by a cold sentence on WeChat saying ‘This account has been independently cancelled and stopped using’, Sony’s official Sony Xperia service account has been completely discontinued. And the official Weibo account of Sony phones, @ Sony Xperia, has not been updated for almost half a year. The latest update is the holiday wishes on March 8th this year——
This means that the promotion of Sony Xperia phones in China has ended.
Earlier, Sony’s hardware business in China had already come to a halt – the last domestically produced phone recorded on Sony’s official website in China was the Xperia 5V, which was already a 2023 product.
So far, it can be said that the business of Sony’s mobile phones in Chinese Mainland has completely fallen into a state of neglect in this November – Sony’s mobile phones, at least in China, have indeed died.
After half a life of turmoil, returning is still a waste of society
Speaking of which, Sony, an 80 year old company that integrates semiconductor manufacturing, film and television industry, virtual entertainment, and music media, and claims to be “stuck in the neck of the global film and television industry”, cannot make a good phone in just a day or two.
In fact, although Sony, as one of the early participants in the mobile communication industry, achieved remarkable performance in the era of feature phones with the golden signboards of Walkman and Cyber shot, it has been completely out of place in the era of smartphones.
The turning point of all of this was in 2007, which changed the direction of the mobile electronics market.
2007 was not only the beginning of the smartphone era with the release of the iPhone and widespread market recognition, but also the most successful year for Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications (SEMC) to enter the mobile phone market.
That year, Sony Ericsson launched the W series music phones through the conversion of the Walkman brand, as well as the K and C series camera phones through the conversion of the Cyber shot card machine, which dominated the feature phone market and set a historical high sales volume of 103 million units——
Sony Ericsson W800i, one of the most classic Walkman phones | TechRadar
However, after the peak comes the valley. Looking back from the current perspective, Sony Ericsson’s simple success in the W/K/C series has actually left Sony’s mobile phone business with a sticking point that has influenced it to this day: overemphasizing the advantages brought by hardware while neglecting software adaptation.
On the other hand, Sony Ericsson, like Nokia and Microsoft, overlooked the enormous potential behind the release of the iPhone in 2007 to “change the role of phones in life”. In 2011, Bert Nordberg, then CEO of Sony Ericsson, admitted in an interview with The Wall Street Journal that:
It can be said with certainty that Sony Ericsson should have paid more attention to the iPhone when it was introduced in 2007.
However, even after realizing that the wave of smartphones was irreversible, Sony Ericsson’s move to catch up was not swift and decisive.
In the years following the iPhone, Sony Ericsson was caught between iPhone OS, Windows Mobile, and Android, trying everything from Xperia X10 to Xperia S, P, U, T, J, E, and more, presenting us with a new drama of “feature phone giants rushing and crawling in the era of smartphones”.
When a company doesn’t know what it’s doing, this product line | Medium
A new turning point occurred in 2012.
In that year, Sony officially acquired 50% of Sony Ericsson’s shares, making Sony Ericsson a wholly-owned subsidiary of Sony Corporation and establishing Sony Mobile Communications (SMC).
More importantly, this merger not only fully acquired control of the mobile phone business from Sony Group, but also incorporated the Xperia product line into Sony Group CEO Kazuo Hirai’s “One Sony” strategy.
Kazuo Hirai, often nicknamed “Uncle” | CNET
At least in terms of the products during the early years of the Sony merger, Kazuo Hirai’s One Sony strategy has achieved certain results. In 2013, Sony released the masterpiece that laid the foundation for the Xperia family’s design at CES – the Xperia Z.
In addition to the timeless Omnibalance design language, the Xperia Z was also a representative of the One Sony technology alliance at the time. From the Bravia of the TV to the Exmor of the sensor, everything could be found on the Xperia Z, not to mention the innovative IP55/57 dual protection standard, which established the Xperia as the “flagship of three defenses” in the future.
And the market has also given Xperia Z sufficient positive feedback.
After the merger and restructuring, the annual sales of Sony Mobile phones increased from approximately 33 million units in the 2012 fiscal year to approximately 39.9 million units in the 2013 fiscal year, and reached a peak of approximately 40 million units in the 2014 fiscal year.
However, these 40 million Xperia units are not the beginning of Sony’s peak, but rather the pinnacle of its debut. Moreover, looking at the global smartphone market at that time, this was also an insignificant number – in 2014, Sony’s global smartphone market share was only 2%, not to mention compared to Xiaomi and Huawei, which were conquering the global market at that time, this sales volume was not even half of LG phones at that time.
According to the statistical method of domestic brands, it already belongs to Others in Others.
Sony, who is not qualified to be on the table | Dazeinfo
As for 2016, after Sony shifted from the Z series to the X/XZ series, the market had already abandoned Sony and completed its evolution——
On the one hand, Apple and Samsung have firmly grasped the global high-end market with the help of patent moats and supply chain protection. Although Xperia has a high price, it has never been able to link its price with brand effect and squeeze into the high-end market.
On the other hand, in 2016, there was an explosive growth in domestic mobile phones, and with the help of the proactive overseas strategy at that time, it quickly seized the mid to low end market that Sony Mobile rarely participated in. By moving up and down on both sides, old brands such as Sony Mobile, LG, HTC, etc. were sandwiched in the middle.
Afterwards, the XZ series of Xperia has never been able to shake off the shadow. According to data agencies, in just four years from 2015 to 2019, the sales of Sony phones fell from about 25 million units to just over 3 million units, evaporating nearly 80%.
Although the products of the XZ generation are well-known, from the perspective of sales trend, it is undoubtedly the biggest Waterloo in Sony’s history of making mobile phones.
Afterwards, we heard Sony Mobile announce that it would abandon its goal of pursuing sales and market share and instead focus on profitability – in other words, ‘I want to put my energy into making money’.
Starting from 2019, Sony has successively launched the new Xperia 1/5/10 series, which claims to be an “integrated and rebooted product line”. The product range has also been reduced from a mix of good and bad to a simple “large cup, medium cup, small cup”.
From the new Xperia digital series, we can see Sony’s very clear strategic transformation: from the original Z, X, XZ series targeting the mass consumer market, to targeting the pure high-end “ultra professional user market”, wanting to make Xperia the second camera in the pockets of photographers and directors.
For example, the monster Xperia Pro-I | TechRadar, which shares a one inch sensor with a black card
At first glance, this strategy seems very correct, not to mention it can more intuitively demonstrate the technical expertise of Alpha, Bravia, and CineAlta departments. However, the market has also taught Sony a lesson in the same way as RED Hydrogen One: products in the form of mobile phones do not need to be overly professional.
Even in the era of the new Xperia digital series, Sony still cannot organically combine the various professional functions on Xperia phones into a complete mobile workflow that can leverage its own advantages.
For example, the Photography Master app that forcibly simulates camera lens changes without allowing continuous zoom
At this stage, Sony seems to have completely penetrated the horn and is starting to struggle with the correlation between hardware and software.
Sony’s attempt to collaborate with Meizu in 2021 is an excellent example. The Xperia, which has everything except software, and the Flyme, which has everything except hardware, could have been a perfect match, but in the end, it ended up with a negative screen and a hasty application market.
The final result is even worse than directly flashing Flyme system on Xperia | Ku’an @ Trash Picking Technology
Meizu may just be struggling with hardware, but Sony is the one who lacks the courage to break a hero’s wrist or change course. After that, Sony Xperia unsurprisingly surpassed the small market of “ultra professional phones”.
Finally, Sony Mobile ended its independent operation in 2021 and was merged into Sony Corporation’s electronic products division. With an impressive product share of less than 1% in the international market and less than 6% in the Japanese domestic market, it will struggle to sustain itself until 2025. While being unable to sell, he insisted on not lowering the price, and finally withdrew from the Chinese Mainland market in this extremely disgraceful form.
Japanese phones that cannot leave Japan
From the history of Sony Xperia phones, it can be seen that the Xperia series can be said to be “born hastily and died badly”.
But the most unsettling thing is that Sony, despite possessing world-class semiconductor technology and industrial design capabilities, has also produced popular products such as the Z3 and XZ1, ultimately achieved such an embarrassing situation that it is impossible not to feel regretful.
Meanwhile, Sony’s “strategic shift” in the past two years is not limited to the Chinese market, and the previously heavily relied upon US market has not been updated since the Xperia 1 V. Although Sony also stated that they have no plans to completely withdraw from the US mobile phone market, such cold treatment is actually an answer to some extent.
A similar situation has also occurred in the European sales region, although the latest Xperia 1 VII is listed on Sony’s official website in major European markets, most of them are out of stock or not available for sale. In a report in July, the foreign media Android Authority bluntly stated:
The future of Sony’s mobile business is more uncertain than ever before.
In the final analysis, whether it is said that it does not understand software or has high expectations but low skills, it is actually Sony’s failure to understand the fundamental problem of “what should be done with a phone” from beginning to end.
They all treat phones as experimental fields, and Google puts Pixel’s software first, ensuring that “this phone can be used” before various hardware options that add points, and even relying on Pixel’s system to improve hardware performance.
From a hardware perspective alone, Pixel 10 is at the mid-range level | TechRadar
Sony’s Xperia is exactly the opposite, always generously putting the latest strongest hardware on the phone, without considering whether the software system they write can convert hardware strength into motivation that consumers are willing to use. The end result is that pure professional users feel lacking in functionality, while pure daily users feel unable to learn.
The portable 4K broadcasting envisioned by Xperia Pro is a versatile usage scenario that is neither too high nor too low | CineD
However, even if Sony wants to turn back to the ordinary consumer market now, it is completely impossible. The ordinary consumer market that has been divided by mainstream manufacturers has long lost its place for Sony.
But will Sony Xperia phones disappear?
In Aifaner’s view, Sony phones still have room for survival. Leaving aside the small sales volume in the Japanese domestic market, Sony’s upcoming Xperia phone is likely to be for other phone manufacturers to see——
The Legendary Xperia 1 VIII | Notebookcheck
Although Sony’s mobile phone business is only short of unplugging, the sensor business is still the industry leader, and the latest LYT-8 series camera sensors have become the main shipment force this year.
The Xperia phones in the future are likely to be used by Sony as a “dedicated display platform” for their own sensors, retaining public sales channels, but the actual target audience is already B-end sensor buyers——
According to sources from the supply chain, Sony will launch a new generation of 1.1-inch bottom sensors in early 2026, which will be standard on a series of “super cup” imaging phones next year.
In short, just like Sharp, the early glory of feature phones does not count in the era of smartphones. Repeated market expectations misjudgments have left Sony, even though it is at the top of the supply chain, unable to break the curse of ‘Japanese phones cannot leave Japan’.
After all, current Sony fans who want to buy a Sony phone are not just buying second-hand – they can only buy second-hand.
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