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

[KBG29]

aLkaLiNE said:

KBG29 said:

The problem is Xperia has no potential for future growth. They may stay profitable, but it is unlikely. As their sales go down, and they get less and less money for R&D they are going to fall further and further behind the competition in all aspects.

There is substantial room for growth within Sonys mobile division. Let's start with actual marketing first; for instance, out of the big 4 cellular carriers in the United States (Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint) guess how many even offer Sony flagship phones let alone any kind of Sony smartphone? 0. Not a single major carrier in the US offers a single Sony smartphone. At best you have to buy the phone out of contract and hope that it's CDMA/HSPA+ band is covered by your carrier. And the thing is, this is how it's been for years. I actually used to be highly interested in the Z3 when that was relevent, but the only way to get the phone was through T-mobile or a super gimped out specially branded Verizon version that was called the "Z3v" but had Z2 specs. So uhm, no room for growth? That's a bold statement. Let's talk the entire lack of marketing first.

 

On the PlayStation side, they will eventually hit a wall with how many consoles they can sell. They need a Mobile compenent to maximize user engagement, and continue to expand the PlayStation Ecosystem.

That is impossible with iterative hardware so I'm not even sure how this can be said. But I'm curious, what do you think this theoretical maximum amount of consoles sold can be? This will ultimately be a moot point as PlayStation becomes more service oriented and less hardware oriented but that's a separate conversation. And, here's another thing - the current Sony ecosystem looks like this - you can have a fully featured premium TV. Oh, you need content for that TV? We make movies. But how about a nice sound system to go with that TV? Yeah, we make audio equipment too. Here's some music to go with that. Hmm.... What else is this missing? Video game console. Hook it up to your TV. Here's some games we also make that you can't play anywhere else. But here's the real kicker. We already make cell phones too that seamlessly integrate with all of these devices. There's even a special app that can do neat things while playing nicely with your PS4 (and remote play! It exists!) But this cell phone does a lot more than just games, so our features can't revolve around that to reach the broadest appeal (case in point cell phone sales absolutely positively dwarf console sales yet not a single one of them focuses on games nor would any of them dare straying the sexily proven candy slab format. Smart phones offer games, but they do not focus on them. Doing so would instantly lock you out of plenty of demographics, and 99% of the business world).

 

As I said above, they can not handle having two competeing mobile divisions within the same company, and its really illogical to compete internally even if they could. They best thing Sony can do for future growth of the company is combine PlayStation and Mobile, and build a wider reaching unified ecosysem of products. The goal of a company is continued growth, innovation, and ever growing profits. Having a bunch of unrelated products will never allow them to achieve maximum growth, working together and utilizing all of their strengths is the best thing they can do.

 

None of their divisions compete with each other, what are you talking about? If anything we've seen a greater effort on synergization since Kaz has taken over. And like, literally, my second point proves that almost all of their divisions work together to create one behemoth of a media/tech giant that finds itself in a unique position. Samsung most popularity makes phones tvs and hard drives I believe. How exactly is that a unified ecosystem? They don't make content for any of their products either. I think you'd have a strong case arguing that Sony has a stronger ecosystem than almost all of their competitors. The real issue is that they've been lacking direction within each division but that appears to be steadily changing. I could probably name you the major and incredibly obvious issues each division has:

TV sets ~ great quality, too expensive

Cell phones - great quality, no marketing/not even readily available

Movie division - they've freelit straight up garbage movies. Do you think an uncharted movie would be what they need to turn the division around? Hell no. Please, lord no. 

 

Like I said, all of these are painfully obvious and the success of these respective branches needs nothing to do with their gaming console. What is pretty cool though, is that you already can do pretty much everything on a ps4 on your cell phone. Almost literally. Including playing games over a wireless or data network (https://youtu.be/brm82zOACUY) almost everything regarding messaging/friends lists, you can shop on the store/check deals and you can use your phone as a menu navigator or keyboard while at home. I just don't see the urgent reason as to why Sony should merge their phones with PlayStation when really they should start with marketing and see how consumers react.

There are many reasons Sony phones are not available on any carriers in the US. AT&T got burned when Sony burried the Vita. AT&T had huge plans for Vita and 4G, and they had an exclusive deal with Sony. Sony burned that bridge when they decided to go all in with Xperia. T-Mobile tryed to sell the Xperia Z - Z3, but the thing just wouldn't move units. They had ads for it, they had great deals, but even thought the phones were as good if not better than the iPhone and Androids, they offered nothing unique that made consumers want to switch from their current manufacture. On the Verizon side, you already hit the nail on the head. 

Mobile carriers don't want the Xperia phones, and customers have shown no interest in them even when they have been available. Another Android device is not what people are looking for. If something wants to overtake the current leaders it has to be completely new.

As for how many console they can sell. I think that is roughly around 100 - 120 million. They will sell more units, but active users will stagnate around 80 - 100 million. I highly disagree with PlayStation becoming more of a service than a hardware business. VR requires local hardware, and VR games and videos are the future. 

You are right that Sony has products for everything, but they are not integrated in a way that your average consumer can easily sit down and use each one of them. You are wrong about in company competition. Sony has two digital movie services for 4K content. They have Smart TV's running on Android, and PlayStation running on thier own in house OS. They have Vita versus Xperia, which is just about a battle again with how bad Xperia sales are getting. Their is very little unity between products. They were actually much closer a decade ago when almost every product ran XMB. They need to get back to that unity again, and start marching forward. Android is leaching the life out of every division it is touching.

Zkuq said:
It's a real shame Xperia phones aren't doing better, because they're excellent.

I have had a Z, a Z3, and an X Performance since Sony fully took over the Sony Ericsson venture. They are decent phones, but they do nothing special, and they are severly limited by Android and carrier compatability. Had Sony carried on With Vita and offered a Slab version of the Vita, they could have a a product miles ahead of where Xperia is right now.