The decline of the Sony mobile division, closer and closer. Why?

The manufacturer is not going through its best moment. No, the Tokyo-based firm remains one of the most important in the technology sector, where it sells televisions and its Sony Music division sweeps the world. But the Sony mobile division It's not exactly going well. At the time we told you about the changes made by the company to get off the ground, like when they decided to unify several divisions to make up a little for the very poor sales of smartphones. But it is not being enough.

And, after finding out that Sony is going to stop selling phones in South America, due to the very poor sales achieved in this country, today we just found out about the Sony mobile sales in 2018, and no, things are not going well for the Japanese company.

Sony has sold just 6.5 million phones in the last year

Initially, the Japanese firm had planned to sell 10 million smartphones between March 2018 and March 2019. But, as the months passed and the sales of its solutions did not do more than drop, the manufacturer began to lower its expectations. First, he checked the figure for Sony mobile phone sales to 9 million, then lowered it to 7 million. And, finally, last January he reduced the sales forecast to 6.5 million units again. And yes, this is the number of smartphones the company has sold in one year.

If we consider that Sony sold 40 million smartphones in fiscal 2014, it is clear that things are extremely bad. And of course, these poor results have caused losses of 97.000 million yen, about 840 million euros at the exchange rate for the Sony mobile division, which has resulted in layoffs and cuts that reach 50 percent.

And beware, the forecasts of the Japanese company could not be more ominous: they predict that they will sell about 5 million Sony mobile phones until March 2020. What does it mean? That by March 2021, the manufacturer would stop manufacturing smartphones since it is not profitable. And maybe even earlier. But how did the Tokyo-based manufacturer get to this point?

Omnibalance, an obsolete design in which the Japanese firm continues to bet

At the time, Sony mobile phones were a benchmark in the sector. The Japanese firm stood out for offering truly complete solutions, being one of the first brands to offer a high-end phone with water resistance, the acclaimed Sony Xperia Z. The problem is that, 6 years have passed, and the firm continues to bet on a design very similar to that of this model launched in 2019. Yes, the Japanese firm continues to offer devices with a design where the front frames make the aesthetics of the terminal seem excessively old. And of course, his competitors have eaten his toast.

Sony mobile prices are excessively high

The phones from the Japanese firm are really good, but expensive. Very expensive. Until a little over a year ago, a Sony mid-range phone was around 400 euros, when we could find better solutions at half the price, and let's not talk about the entry-level, where the figures were so large that we still do not understand how they could sell terminals. And in the high-end they found themselves with a big problem: although it is true that the IP certification that endowed their most premium solutions with resistance to dust and water marked the difference with respect to their competitors, they did not take long to adopt this characteristic in their solutions, so that added value that Sony mobiles had was diluted.

And let's be clear: nobody wants a square phone, with an outdated design, if you can have a terminal with a more modern design, or even devices with the same, or better features, at a lower price.

The photographic section, the great Achilles heel of Sony mobile phones

Finally, we have a point in particular that no user understands. How can it be that the Japanese manufacturer is the largest distributor of camera components and does not have the best camera smartphone on the market? Yes, the vast majority of flagships rely on sensors from the Japanese firm, but Sony mobile cameras are not exactly the best. To be exact, they are not even in the top 5. And let's not forget the manufacturer's habit of releasing a new flagship every 6 months, saturating the market with models that are simply traces with slight improvements that make the user decide to bet by other brands.