Sony Mobile Sales Hit 4 Year Low

by Sohrab Osati | Oct 30, 2015 | 19 comments
Sohrab Osati

Sony_Mobile_Q3_2015_2As I reported yesterday, PlayStation continues to be a bright spot for Sony. The gaming division continues to increase its year-over-year sales as it dominates its competitor, the Xbox One, nearly two to one. With digital imaging also on the rise, which is also helping fuel more aggressive plans by Sony like purchasing Toshiba’s CMOS sensor business, the one division that continues to hold the company is still their mobile arm. In fact, sales of Xperia smartphones have hit a four year low, far behind their 2014 quarter as can be seen from the above chart.

More details along side a more complete sales chart can be found after the jump.

Sony expects to finish 2015 with 27 million units shipped. Despite sales being down 31% compared to the year prior, Sony has not revised their 2015 sales which means though things are going poorly, they are going as expected for the company and not deteriorating further/faster than their own internal projections. For Q3 2015, Sony managed to pump out 6.7 million smartphones compared to 9.9 million units in Q3 2014.

Perhaps what’s alarming is that, the most important quarter (the holidays), which generally yields the highest volume of units sold, might be Sony’s lowered sales quarter. They expect to pump out between 5 and 6 million smartphones. It’s worth noting that Sony Mobile is also responsible for tablets and wearables which means those units are doing nothing in terms of volume. The dramatic decline in sales is alarming, seeing how for the Q4 holiday period, Sony will have had a series of new devices into the market, including their flagship Xperia Z5 alongside the premium mid-range Xperia C5 Ultra & Xperia M5. The chart below, which can be enlarged by clicking on it, reveals how poorly Sony Mobile has been doing. Clearly things are not working out for them.

Still, by Sony announcing a brand new, wholly-owned smartphone factory, it is clear that they are committed to the mobile market for some time to come.

Discuss:

What do you think Sony can do to change their mobile division’s future?