Its no secret that Sony’s mobile business has been struggling. Despite coming out with great handsets, the Japanese company has been having a hard time selling its handsets to consumers.
There are a lot of reasons behind this including the fact that Sony hardly markets its devices in the United States and European markets. The struggling business of the Japanese company led to rumors that it is looking to exit the mobile market or sell its smartphone division to interested buyers. While the rumors were shot down soon after, doubts still lingered around in the mind of critics.
Now, in an interview with Arabian Business, Sony’s new Mobile CEO and President, Hiroki Totoki, has revealed that Sony “will never ever sell or exit from the current mobile business.” The 9 months old CEO of the company says that 2015 is a year of big transformation for the company, which it is trying to complete it by the end of this year.The transformation will see Sony reduce its costs by 30 percent and the total number of employees by 20 percent to streamline the organisation and improve its profitability.
Totoki then says that the company will never exit the smartphone business because the opportunity in this market is huge.
“Smartphones are completely connected to other devices, also connected to people’s lives — deeply. And the opportunity for diversification is huge. We’re heading to the IoT (Internet of Things) era and have to produce a number of new categories of products in this world, otherwise we could lose out on a very important business domain. (godaddy.com) In that sense we will never ever sell or exit from the current mobile business.”
The CEO also accepts that with Chinese manufacturers coming up with good quality smartphones, the “competition has become severe.” However, Totoki says that the user experience delivered by these phones are not great, and a consumer buys a phone not because of its internals, but because of the user experience that it is able to deliver.
Make sure to read the full interview over at Arabian Business where Hiroki Totoki talks about wearables, IoT, and more.
