Sony Mobile has set some lofty goals for itself. Speaking to The Wall Street Journal, Dennis van Schie, CVP of Sales & Marketing, revealed that the company wants to become the third largest handset vendor by sales. It may not be able to do so next year but van Schie also said that it would happen “not in 10 years’ time, but a lot sooner.”
Sony Mobile estimates that it currently has about 6.5 to 7 percent of the market by value. To reach its goal, it will need to increase that to about 20 percent. Sony will leverage strengths such as its brand and its distribution network and will focus on the high end of the smartphone market. “That is where the value is, that is where the money is,” explained van Schie, adding that “Sony still has a very strong brand awareness and brand recognition, which is premium and quality and design-lead.”
Sony’s resurgence began when the company bought out Ericsson from their joint venture back in 2011. Up to that point, Sony Ericsson did not get preferential treatment when it came to core Sony technological advances. “Even if we thought we were part of Sony, all the hard-core technological assets that were available—applications, services, the hardware, like the sensors—were not really made available to us,” he explained. Now it does and this can be used as a competitive advantage against its competitors. It also now has access to Sony’s entertainment portfolio, another strength in an age where content is another strength when it comes to selling a smartphone.
To achieve its goal, Sony will need to improve its performance in two key markets: China and the U.S. How it plans on doing that was not addressed in the interview.
An earlier report indicated that Sony had set itself a goal of shipping 65 million smartphones in its next fiscal year, a 55 percent improvement over projected sales in the current fiscal year.
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Source : The Wall Street Journal