It is time for Sony to merge its mobile division into PlayStation

[KBG29]

Sony Mobile Communications continues to slide. Sales of Xperia Smartphones fell 2.5 million units year over year to 5.1 million in FYQ3 2016. Sony lowered year end expectations for the second time to 15 Million units, a number which they will likely still fall short of. 

http://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/IR/library/er.html

These sales numbers are absolulty pathetic. Sony can not compete in the Android space with more me too slabphones, they need to shake things up. They need to take advantage of all of the Sony knowledge and cross divisional advantages they have. Running phones on an OS and ecosystem that competes directly with their own PlayStation OS and ecosystem is a fools move. It is time they unify their hardware stratagy across the company.

Sony needs to get to work on moving their entire mobile line of products under the PlayStation division, and get all of their wearable and home assistant devices working seamlessly with the PlayStation 4. This will add major strength to their most profitable division, and greatly increase user engagment with the platform. PlayStation Watch, PlayStation Band, and PlayStation Ear would all perform much better tied to the much more popular PlayStation products, than their Xperia counterparts. Add in Phones, Handhelds, and Tablets all running on the unified PlayStation OS, and Sony will have a solid platform and ecosystem that delivers not only the diversity of a smartphone, but also the world class gaming of PlayStation.

At a time when the Smartphone market has hit a wall in innovation, Sony has a major opening to change things up. With the console landscape changing, and games being built around scalability, instead of specifically for one peice of hardware, Sony needs to take advantage of this, and widen their footprint. Allwoing users to purchase one game that plays across all of their PlayStation branded devices, would be a major boost in value for software, and hardware. Incentivising users to purchase digitally would greatly increase profits of the PlayStation Store, and the company overall.

With Xperia sales at an all time low, and PlayStation sales at an all time high, it is time for Sony to use the momentum to try a re-launch their other divisions, much in the same way Apple did off the highly successful iPod. With a unified OS, a scalable hardware approach, and the massive value of all software working across all Sony devices, they have a shot at turning massive profits, and making Sony one of the top Tech and OS companies in the world.