Sony Mobile sales chief promises a more competitive flagship smartphone
Sony has been a part of the Android scene about as long as any manufacturer, but despite a handful of aesthetically pleasing phones, they haven’t done much to establish themselves as a top smartphone option. That honor has gone to the likes of Samsung and HTC (as well as the iPhone), something that sales chief Dennis van Schie admits the company needs to address.
“We will create in the near future a flagship model that can compete with Apple’s iPhone and Samsung’s Galaxy S III,” Schie said in a recent interview the Financial Times Deutschland. All signs point to the debut of such a phone at Mobile World Congress 2012.
But we’ve heard this story before. Sony teases their next big and debuts it on the world stage, but for a multitude of reasons the company has failed to capture a real audience. It’s not for a lack of trying. Their smartphones are built with the same quality and design-oriented appeal that you would expect from a Sony product, and the internal specs of their latest models are good enough to compete with the best on the market (HD displays, multi-core processing, 13MP cameras). It’s just something about the way Sony has handled their Android business that has turned away consumers.
In the US, Sony’s Xperia phones have remained virtually exclusive to AT&T, and while the company has done a better job recently of handling Android updates, their track record up until recently has not been the best.
It’s good that Sony recognizes that they still have room to improve, but it’s going to take more than simply strapping together the best possible compliment of hardware and putting it in a svelte-looking package. Sony will need to change their overall approach and learn how to better position their Android devices in an increasingly crowded market.
[via TechCrunch]