Summary
You’d be excused for not knowing Sony still makes phones. For what it’s worth, they’re actually pretty good, but they’re not as popular as they used to be. Despite what has certainly looked like a clear scaleback, Sony is still not giving up on Xperia, at least publicly.
Sony Group’s Chief Financial Officer, Sue Lin, has tried to publicly deny speculation that Sony was giving up on the Xperia line. Speaking at a corporate financial results briefing on August 7th, Lin stated that Xperia “is a very important business for us.” The statement came as a direct response to concerns following all the technical issues the latest model, theXperia 1 VII, has been suffering. In case you haven’t seen, buyers have been reporting a variety of issues, including random reboots and shutdowns, frequent overheating, battery drain, and charging problems, which have even caused Sony to stop selling the device while it fixes the issues. It was also recently reported that Sony outsourced the production of this phone, which is made by a third party rather than Sony itself.
It should also be noted that Xperia isn’t the household name it once used to be. Xperia phones are not sold in the US anymore, and even in Sony’s home market of Japan, it’s not the hottest thing anymore—Apple holds the most market share in Japan, and while Sony still holds some market share, it is behind other Android OEMs such as Google, Xiaomi, and Samsung.
Despite all these problems, which certainly sound like things that happen to a smartphone line that its maker doesn’t care about anymore, Sony is at the very least not publicly admitting it. “Communication technology is a very important technology that Sony has cultivated for a long time,” Lin explained. “We also want to continue to value our smartphone business.” Lin emphasized that the expertise and patents developed within Sony’s mobile division have critical applications in products beyond not just smartphones, making it a vital hub for innovation across the entire Sony Group.
Sony phones have a small, albeit enthusiastic, community of users who value the fact that Sony cares about things like headphone jacks, microSD slots, and more niche features like an odd 21:9 aspect ratio display and professional-grade camera controls. It won’t be able to stay afloat just from this, though, but I guess this news does mean that we’ll see an Xperia 1 VIII next year. After that, though, the Xperia line could (and probably will) go the way of LG phones—killed off due to a last-minute business decision because it’s not really profitable to keep it going.
