In particular, the company pointed to long development

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Android Authority also highlighted other problems with Sony's smartphone business:

Pricing. In 2018, Sony released the Xperia XZ2 Premium for $1,000 — aside from a 4K screen, the smartphone had nothing to stand out in a crowded premium market. The “regular” XZ2 had an excellent display and “fantastic” sound quality, but it was priced at $800 in the US and $1,060 in India. The compact Xperia XZ2 Compact, priced at $600, had “nothing useful” except for its size — competitors were cheaper and offered more.
The release of new flagships twice a year, the release of many similar models, and in some cases the hardware of the device is outdated at the time of release.
Weak advertising campaigns and lack of partnerships with U.S. carriers did not help brand awareness: "If people don't know you sell smartphones, you won't sell smartphones."
Lack of an aggressive promotion strategy meant the company had nothing to stand out from its competitors. Sony needed to take risks, lower prices, and implement industry standards more quickly—this could help improve the smartphone business, the journalists believed.
In the first quarter of 2021, Sony's mobile division managed to show a profit for the first time in five years: $254 million for the 2020 fiscal year.

At the same time, Sony sold fewer smartphones in 2020 than in any year of the last decade — only 2.9 million. At its peak in 2014, Sony sold 39.1 million devices.


Sony Xperia sales volume from 2011 to 2020

To make a profit, Sony reduced production costs and increased the average price of smartphones: the Sony Xperia 1 III cost $1,299. But the main thing the company did was find its niche, notes Android Authority.

With the Xperia 1 model, Sony has finally refocused from the mass market to niche premium multimedia devices that serve as a demonstration of technologies from other divisions of the company or are designed for working with photos and videos.

For example, it brought back the 3.5mm audio jack, employed proprietary sound processing technologies, used 4K OLED HDR Bravia displays, as well as technologies from the Sony Alpha line of branded cameras.


Sony Xperia 1 III

For professional video shooting in the field, Sony has released the france number data Xperia Pro smartphone for $2,499, which can be used as an external monitor for photo and video cameras.

To do this, the smartphone is equipped with an HDMI port for connecting to external sources and a 6.5-inch 4K HDR screen with support for the BT.2020 standard for accurate image transmission from the camera.


Sony Xperia Pro

As a result, Sony still continues to produce smartphones that have started to make a profit — despite the fact that Sony presidents have promised several times in the past to completely close the direction.

Now the development of Xperia is important for Sony for another business line - the development and production of mobile sensors for smartphones. It is the mobile division that has come under the "supervision" of Sony Alpha specialists.

Walkman
In 1979, Sony introduced the Walkman, a compact cassette player that took the music market by storm and became a worldwide hit. By 1989, Sony had sold over 100 million players, by 1999, 186 million, and by 2004, 330 million.