KBG29 said:
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.
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. |
Companies don't stop working together just because they get "burned" if the venture is still profitable (console wars and the like are completely fabricated by fans. That is simply not how the real world actually is, you don't not do business with someone because of a grudge). This is, like I said a marketing/logistics issue and it's without a doubt on Sonys end. The phones never sold hundreds of millions in one quarter because there was no push from Sony to raise product awareness, coupled with they've always had slim to no presence or availability in the US, which believe it or not has a great deal of influence around the world when it comes to setting fashion trends (if Xperia became a hot product here, it would bolster sales elsewhere). Have you ever seen a single Sony phone ad on tv in the last 5 years? I haven't here in the states, not sure where you're from. Despite generally reviewing highly, despite introducing cutting edge features to the market first (Guess who came out with the first viable waterproof smartphone? Sony. Guess who copied them right after? Samsung with the Galaxy S4 active. Guess who has the worlds first 4K display in a smart phone? Sony. CES 2013 - Best Smartphone, Best of Show awards: Sony Xperia Z, the premier flagship for their mobile division. Here's the kicker, CES was held in Las Vegas that year but the Xperia Z would only officially ever come to T-Mobile. The alternative was buying a $630 phone without a contract directly online.
Let me flip this around though. What features do a Samsung Galaxy phone or other various premium android phone offer that would make it "unique" or keep a customer around? Apple is excluded as they are a separate platform, but on android people choose Samsung because of market penetration, a certain "trend" factor and consistency. They always include the latest features while introducing a gimmick or two, launch on all major carriers and then proceed to market the living fuck out of their phones, making people aware that "Hey, I'm a premium product and look what I can do!" We have never seen anything close to that with Xperia and America. Nothing even remotely close. People barely know they exist here, but if Sony would actually inform the consumer that they offer sometimes literally the most powerful phone on the market with cutting edge features available to anyone regardless of carrier, then it's hard to imagine that there wouldn't be a positive reaction. There is crazy, massive amounts of growth in that sector and it wouldn't be that hard. They're just a fiscally conservative company and they have to be (which appears to be working)
One of the biggest things to consider is your expectations of a phones OS in the modern world. Keeping that in mind, do you think Sony really has the expertise to design and develop a competent enough mobile OS that will give a Similarily flexible experience to android or iOS? I rather strongly don't think so. I'm not saying they couldn't do it, but it would take years of R&D and it would probably mean launching a buggy crude OS that sorely lacked features at launch. That's no way to grow mobile right now, especially when they lack the capital. It would be like cutting your Achilles heel.
Microsoft has their own phone division too, and actually they happen to run on their own OS. Not much success there. Less than Sony with their phone division actually which runs Android.
