Sony has already stopped making feature phones, but now we are hearing that Sony might even stop making entry-level smartphones. This news might come as a shock to various budget conscious consumers, who were happy with smartphones like Xperia tipo that provide value for money.
According to a report in CNET Asia, a Sony executive has told the blog that Sony might leave the very entry tier in order to keep the “Sonyness” in their smartphones, which apparently is not implementable at lower price-points.
“We’re ready to be a premium smartphone provider, logically then, at the very entry level is where you lose the ‘Sonyness’. And it’s where you cannot implement some of these wonderful things from Sony at such a low cost, we might leave the very entry tier to some other manufacturers,” Stephen Sneeden, Xperia product marketing manager told CNET.
He added that mid-to-premium tier seems more suitable market to the company, as with time flagship devices trickle down to mid-range. So, effectively Sony will only be releasing flagship and high-end smartphones.
In order to further emphasize the new (possibly) company strategy, Sneeden stated that Sony cannot compromise on the experience that the company is trying to show to the customer.
2 replies on “After feature phones, Sony may leave the entry-level smartphone segment: Report”
i am least surprised. With HTC leaving the entry level section to focus more on the premium range, Sony was bound to follow. And it is mostly because of random small brands making entry as well as Samsung flooding the entrylevel market with all sort of mobiles (almost all of them with crappy configuration).
But there is still the Xperia E (same as Miro with but with Android 4.1) to come and that will be the end of entry level Sony mobiles. They did the right thing to leave entry level rather than adopt same strategy of packing QVGA display & Broadcomm/Mediatek soc to keep cost down and sacrifice usability.
Seeing the local manufacturers selling so may entry level smaprtphones in various countries, this makes sense for premium manufacturers like Sony or HTC. I await the Xperia V in India.