US smartphone shipments declined 24% YoY in Q2 2023, according to Counterpoint Research’s Market Monitor data. This was the third consecutive quarter of YoY declines. Android brands like Samsung, Motorola and TCL-Alcatel saw the steepest declines in shipments, while Apple’s shipments were more resilient. As a result, Apple’s share of shipments increased YoY.
What is your source for Sony Xperia line made profit? Are you basing it off from reading other tech blogs?
Well there is no exact way to know exact profit and loss for Smartphone division as they merged it with TV, Audio and Camera division. Only info they give for Smartphone division is their revenue and it is lower than TV, Audio and Camera division. In FY2020 results they mentioned they had a small profit for first time after FY2017, this is attributed to cutting expenses in Smartphone division(Source check FY2020 Financial Briefing). In FY2022 the revenue declined when compared to 2021 (https://www.sony.com/en/SonyInfo/IR/library/presen/er/pdf/22q4_sony.pdf page16). If you stitch together Smartphone division revenue from past 10 years it’s been on steady decline. Based on their earning call and analyst estimate Sony ships between 2-3 million units a year. Meanwhile Samsung shipped 260.9 million and Apple 226.4 million units last year. How can Sony Smartphone division be profitable when they are selling such low number of units, it’s hardly enough to amortize the development cost.
You’re talking about the sales of a phone line that has virtually $0 in advertising in the US Market as a sign of flagging sales of feature-complete phones compared to Apple and Samsung’s marketing team?
But let’s say you’re 100% right. Lets say 95% of people don’t care about headphones jacks, SD Cards, etc. You’re STILL losing to Apple 10% YoY, and they haven’t even released the iPhone with USB-C or forced to open their OS to yet. It’s 6-4 iPhone majority today. Are you really going to continue the same strategy that got you to this point? How are you, if you’re Samsung, Google, Motorola, going to entice customers? Suddenly, that 5% of power users look pretty important for your shareholders.
There is a good reason why Sony stopped advertising their phones in US and stopped all carrier partnership it is due to low sales and huge loss from continuing their previous strategy. That cut was the reason why they were able to make some profit in 2020. You can read about it here.
You are saying stopping to cater the enthusiast market is the reason why Android is losing to iPhone for market share and they will lose more when iPhone comes with USB-C. If these enthusiasts where the key to marketshare why would they move to iPhone which is more restrictive? If USB-C is all it needs to sway enthusiasts, what is even the point with Android phones that support SD card and headphone jack? If you look at Samsung Smartphone divisions earnings and profit(from April 2023), it is actually up YoY even when global smartphone shipments have declined. Clearly it looks like they know what they are doing, they are making more profit even with less units being shipped.