For quite a long time, Sony Ericsson has daunted the mobile giants Nokia, Samsung, et all, yet somehow always falling at the last hurdle. It was a story of the underdog putting up a brave fight, but always failing to upset the champion. Faced with rapidly falling sales, and a lineup that didn’t offer anything different or exciting, SE had to comeup with something radical to stay afloat. Their recent refresh in Q4 2009 offers something for everyone, with a variety of devices aimed at different segments and price points. But will it be enough to save the company and turn it around? This article tries to explore.
The beginning
It all started with the Xperia X1, released in Feb 2008 that caught the attention of everyone. With a functional touchscreen+QWERTY keypad, a different approach to the UI(panels), an unmatched display, a reasonably fast processor+RAM running WinMo 6.1 to boot, it seemed that SE had managed to pack everything sweet into a comfortable form factor. With expectations running sky high, SE did finally manage to deliver something that no one had done then, albeit at a high price.
Meanwhile, 2008 turned out to a year SE would love to forget, keeping in trend with the economic slowdown.
Sony Ericsson are reporting that for Q4 of 2008 sales were down a mighty 23% on last year, that margins are down 15% on last year and they have stated that they had a net loss for the period of €187 million.(Detailed report here )
Yet, the Xperia X1 managed to do better than most of its siblings. Expectations were running high on the successor to X1, with news that SE had joined the Open Handset Alliance adding fuel to the speculations that they were going the Andriod way. With a regular product lineup that only offered incremental features, SE had to take a significant hit on its sales numbers and profit margins for 2008 .
2008-2009
From Q2 2008 to Q3 2009, SE managed to release updated phones in the walkman, cybershot lineup. Phones such as the G900, W705, C902 kept the competition alive in the mid-end segment. Although their numbers aren’t known, one can take a wild guess that they would’ve done pretty well considering SE manages to sell mid range products in good numbers.
With no other high end phone released (other than the X1), the W995 managed to have its fair share of glory. With a 8.1 MP camera and the walkman tag, it managed to combine the best of the ‘C’ and ‘W’ series. The phone did reasonably well from June 2009 till the next wave of SE products were released in October. Incidentally, this also marked the end of the ‘C’ and ‘W’ lineups as SE switched to a different branding strategy.
New Wave
After Xperia X1 sold in decent numbers, and the smartphone market growing strongly with the availability of newer platforms and devices, it was inevitable for SE to adopted a new strategy. Not only did it need a new flagship product, but also a diverse enough product range that would do good in all segments.
Around May 2009, rumors began to spread that they were working on something big - a successor to the X1 running Andriod. What was called as Rachael, and then X3, was finally christened ”Xperia X10” when it was officially announced in November 2009. It would not be appropriate to call it X1’s successor in the strict sense because it isn’t a QWERTY phone (that title will probably goto the Xperia X2). The X10 has a list of firsts for SE - the first with a Qualcomm QSD8250 Snapdragon 1 GHz processor, and the first phone on Andriod. It was directly pitted against the likes of iPhone 3GS, the Palm Pre, and the N97. While the ommission of Andriod 2.0(donut) will definitely be a big let down, the probable reason for it would be that they are having trouble porting their custom UI for donut and would rather focus on shipping the X10 on time.
Meanwhile, the ‘C’ and ‘W’ series made way for a new strategy where SE tried putting the best of both worlds into a single product. The clear distinction beween the two series is now gone as both the Satio and Aino have high end cameras, and media capabilities (in addition to the smartphone capabilities of the Satio). Also, the true successor to the X1 came in form of the Xperia X2, which offered incremental upgrades and WinMo 6.5 to keep the fanboys happy.
Of particular interest is the Satio. It is the second 12mp mobile on the market, losing out only to the Samsung Pixon. Leaving that aside, it has almost the same hardware specs as the iPhone 3GS and runs the tried and tested Symbian S60 5th edition. Although S60.5 isn’t the best in terms of touch optimization and response, the fact that Symbian is the most popular smartphone OS with thousands of applications readily available will play to its advantage. Putting a high end camera and media capabilities into a smartphone is a gamble - it may be a smart move if they manage to do both well. Unfortunately the homebrew UI isn’t tried and tested, and the fact that it runs on S60.5 which isn’t particularly smooth itself, might just put off prospective buyers. With that said, its about time SE had a bit of luck, and the Satio seems like it deserves every bit of it.
Final Words
The announcement of 4 top end products targeted equally at the trigger happy, music junkies, enthusiasts and business executives, SE has tried to get its wheels moving. With varied platforms like WinMo, Andriod and Symbian, and high end hardware specs, it has forced mobile buyers to take a good hard look. No more losing out on prospective customers because they don’t like the mobile platform - there is now something for everyone. With the Satio and Aino already out on the market, the X10 and X2 are expected to be released in early Jan 2010. This does mean than they will lose out on the high spending Christmas and New Year weeks, but its always better to release a polished product than repent later.
SE does have something to worry about. All these products are top of the line and there is nothing new for the lower and mid segments. Was this a conscious decision or were they too busy focusing only on their high end lineup is a question that will have to be answered. If they can put out patches and bug fixes for the next 6 months and keep customers happy, 2010 may just turn out to be a good year for the failing giant. Will it take them back to the glory years of the K750i? Only time will tell.