Sony Needs to Up Marketing Spend to Convey Smartphone Tech Prowess, Says IHS

Without a “marketing spend” to revitalize its name, Sony will remain a niche brand in smartphones, said IHS analyst Ian Fogg in a Mobile World Congress recap. Sony has been “a genuine leader” in new mobile technologies in recent years, but “it has failed to convert technology leadership positions into market leadership,” Fogg said. Sony bowed at MWC the Xperia XZ2 smartphone with a 5.7-inch, 18:9 display and 4K HDR video recording, a first for a phone, and a 5-inch version of the phone with a 1080p display. It also launched the Xperia Ear Duo, open earbuds compatible with Android and iOS. Sony’s 2017 mobile market share was 1 percent vs. 1.1 percent the year before with shipments of 13.7 million, said IHS. Sony has improved its design “but not enough to stand out in the market,” Fogg said. Sony’s innovations in the 2018 smartphones will “set the tone for the smartphone market for the next few years,” said the analyst, saying other smartphone OEMs will deliver similar capabilities in the future, including “copying Sony’s 4K HDR video capture.” The CE company reached the market first with 960-frame-per-second slow-motion video capture last year, which Samsung came out with last week in the Galaxy S9, and Sony was first with on-phone noise cancellation, high-quality audio formats and the first 4K display, Fogg noted. “But Sony has failed to market these features to consumers and use these differentiated features to re-grow its business."