Many think every smartphone maker has entered this field to earn money, far from it. Say, the Japanese Sony always comes with great phones designed for every kind of customers. But its smartphones are not competitive. For example, last year it was the first to announce a Snapdragon 835-powered smartphone, while Samsung and Xiaomi were fighting to gran the title of the first position. Another interesting case, Sony was the first to come in with a 4K screen handset. We can talk about similar cases too long, but the truth is Sony doesn’t occupy an impressive market share. That’s why recently the company was asked to give up the smartphone business. But an executive revealed why they are in the industry, and why they will remain there.
Sony CEO, Kaz Hirai said in an interview with The Guardian that Sony should continue selling products to stay in the telecommunications industry. Smartphones are the future of technology. So staying there will allow them to monitor the development of the industry.
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Currently, Sony is a major supplier of camera sensors for other manufacturers. This simply means its own Xperia series phones should rock in the market. But they don’t. So Kaz Hirai’s explanation why they are still there is quite reasonable:
The reason we’re doing that is not because we think smartphones are the future, but because we have to have some devices connected to a network in order to communicate. If we get out of the [communications] space, we won’t have the opportunity to play in the next paradigm shift.
It’s not about the smartphones of today; it’s more about looking beyond smartphones – at what are we going to be doing – and to be a player in this space; ideally to be a leader. For that strategic reason, I want to make sure we stay, not in the smartphone business, per se, but in the communications business.