It Took Sony 3 Months To Sell As Many Smartphones As Samsung Does Every Day

Sony sold just 600,000 smartphones in its third fiscal quarter of the year.

That’s not good, when you’re competing with companies like Samsung, who is selling that many each day – on average.

Sony had forecasted at the beginning of the year that it would sell around five million smartphones this year. That has been dropped to four million and now with this latest earnings report, it is now down to just 3.5 million for the year.

Sony’s smartphone troubles continue

Sony has never really sold a lot of smartphones. It has always been one of the smaller manufacturers out there, and that was fine, since Sony had other divisions that were pulling the slack for the mobile division. Like its image sensor and PlayStation divisions.

But something has to change. Sony can’t keep losing money like this, on smartphones, and keep making smartphones. At this rate, they are going to be selling less than a million year, by next year or 2021.

Sony also prices their smartphones pretty high, trying to compete with Samsung and others. But Sony always has some caveat that really keeps their smartphones from being big sellers. Not to mention the fact that Samsung is just killing the game right now.

Sony needs to drop prices, and advertise more

Sony phones aren’t bad. But at the prices they are charging, they just aren’t getting the attention. If they dropped the price of the Xperia 1 to around $700 (instead of the $949 it costs), it would likely get more attention and possibly even become a best seller.

Then there is also the advertising part. Sony doesn’t really advertise its smartphones at all. When was the last time you saw an ad for a Sony smartphone? I don’t think I’ve ever seen one.

The only real ads we see for Sony smartphones, are in its movies. And typically when those movies come out, the phone that was used, has about three successors.

That leads us to another thing that needs to change. Sony needs to stop replacing its flagship every six months. Especially when Sony doesn’t release that smartphone for many months after it is announced. Which means that the time-frame of people buying that phone, is much smaller, and they don’t sell as many.

Sony should know all of this, it’s stuff that we and other publications have been saying for ages, but it seems to be falling on deaf ears. Maybe the fact that Sony is only selling 600,000 smartphones in a three-month period will prompt some changes over there.