Sony mobile has announced that it would be ‘defocusing’ on markets such as India, China, Brazil, and the US where it has not succeeded in making a considerable impact in the past few years.
At a recent investor day event which took place in Tokyo, the company announced their plans for the aforementioned reasons, citing a downward slide in its smartphone business in these regions.
The news was brought to light after Xperia Blog, an unofficial website dedicated to Sony’s products, got access to the details discussed at the investor day meet.
It was also mentioned that Sony expects its smartphone business to only grow 0.3 per cent in these markets, which is not at all satisfactory, given the effort put behind churning out a good product. To put matters to perspective, Sony’s estimate last year was over 8.1per cent; however, the outcomes have changed drastically.
The company also gave insights on its regional strategy, pointing out that it will only focus on regions which are expected to flourish such as East Asia including Japan, Europe and the Middle East.
Apart from that, the manufacturers of the once popular Xperia series also said that it would also ‘preserve its businesses in Latin America and other Asia Pacific regions.
Intrusion of cheap, affordable devices
Another reason the company is shying away from the Indian market can be attributed to the uncountable number of new Chinese manufacturers that are producing affordable, premium-like devices.
The mid-tier smartphone market in India has now become a battleground and the competition is relentless. Now smartphone manufactures are coming up with new technologies—both software and hardware—to keep the people engaged.
The moment a company decided to take off the foot from the pedal, another manufacturer will be looking to take advantage of the ignorance. In such a scenario, the handset market in India has become really volatile, where no one can be crowned the king of the pack.
Besides, Sony has a lot of other business which make money for them and its not like they would be completely eliminating their presence; it will just withdraw some of its future handsets.
