Sony Xperia 1 III could do well to take a leaf from the Samsung Galaxy S21’s book
Less money means more money.
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It’s no secret thatSony phonesdon’t sell too well anymore - the companyreportedselling only a million mobiles in the financial quarter ending 31 December 2020, which is down 22% from the previous year. While sales figures for the whole year aren’t in yet, that paints a sour picture of phone sales for the Japanese tech company thatreportedly sold 100 million phonesin 2007.
So why aren’t people buyingSonyphones anymore? The burgeoning abundance of phone brands doesn’t help, with myriad Chinese companies taking bigger and bigger bites of the market pie, but another big issue is the price.
In our reviews of theSony Xperia 1andXperia 5, the brand’s top-end and mid-range entries respectively for 2019, we called out the high costs of each phone; for ourXperia 1 IIandXperia 5 IIreviews, we went so far as to list the high prices in the ‘cons’ list of the reviews, signifying the high price was a major issue for the smartphones.
While Sony phones can be great, with powerful processors and good-looking screens, smartphone fans are always after value for money, something you’re not necessarily getting if you’re shelling out huge amounts for a device. That’s somethingSamsungrealized, and it’s something Sony needs to figure out too for its upcomingXperia 1 III.
Samsung Galaxy S21 sales are in
When you compare theSamsung Galaxy S20andGalaxy S21on paper, you realize the company’s newest flagship for 2021 doesn’t offer many upgrades on its 2020 predecessor. The big change for the newer device was a lower asking price, and that seems to have made all the difference.
Speaking to theKorea Herald, Samsung reports that its Galaxy S21 sales are up 30% year-on-year in South Korea - the company was specifically talking about sales in the phone’s first two weeks of existence, suggesting there is a lot more initial excitement for the newer, more affordable devices.
Furthermore, astatement from Samsung UKconfirms the S21’s sales have also beaten those of theSamsung Galaxy S10from 2019, at least in the UK. Over half the series' pre-orders were for theGalaxy S21 Ultra, but that too is cheaper than its predecessor.
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So, Samsung’s new, more affordable smartphone sells better than its predecessors, despite not bringing many changes? It seems hard to deny, then, that the lower price is directly responsible for these improved sales.
What Sony can learn
Samsung’s success with selling lower-cost smartphones should send a message to all phone makers, but particularly to Sony, which is seemingly struggling with phone sales at the moment.
Hypothetically, if Sony’s focus for the Xperia 1 III wasn’t in making a movie-watching and game-playing powerhouse, as it seems the brand’s focus was for the previous Xperia devices, but instead on making a similar phone to the Xperia 1 II but at a lower cost, it could win customers over.
There may be reasons the company has shied away from such a move in the past - Sony products in many categories tend to be high-priced ones, with itsAlpha A1camera,PlayStation 5games console andWH-1000XM4headphones all costing top dollar. However, there’s no point in the company single-mindedly putting out top-price products if no-one’s going to buy them, no matter how premium the resultant phone.
Lots of the older smartphone brands are giving up the ghost - reports suggestLG will stop making smartphones, HTC pumps out about one phone a year, Blackberry has been gone so long it’sprimed for a nostalgic revival, and even Nokia, though still putting out devices (albeit through HMD Global), has become rather spotlight-shy.
Sony needs to make some changes to ensure it doesn’t go the same way as its contemporaries, and while putting out more affordable smartphones wouldn’t totally save it, it would be a good first step.
Tom Bedford was deputy phones editor on TechRadar until late 2022, having worked his way up from staff writer. Though he specialized in phones and tablets, he also took on other tech like electric scooters, smartwatches, fitness, mobile gaming and more. He is based in London, UK and now works for the entertainment site What To Watch.
He graduated in American Literature and Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia. Prior to working on TechRadar, he freelanced in tech, gaming and entertainment, and also spent many years working as a mixologist.
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