There was a time when holding a Sony Xperia meant something. It felt premium, deliberate, like Sony actually gave a damn. But today, that legacy has curdled into indifference. The Xperia brand has become a masterclass in missed potential: overpriced, underdelivered, and increasingly unavailable. From botched launches to vanishing market share, the Sony Xperia bungle isn’t just a misstep; it’s a slow-motion collapse.
So the question now isn’t when Sony will fix things. It’s whether they even care enough to try.
All the Right Parts, None of the Vision
Sony had the ingredients for dominance. It made its own displays, sensors, and audio gear. Its Bravia TV panels were renowned for color accuracy. Its camera division produced sensors used not just in its own devices but in rivals’ phones too. And beyond hardware, Sony had something few companies could dream of: a solid ecosystem. Millions grew up with a Sony TV in their living room, a Walkman in their pocket, or a PlayStation console nestled under their TV.
This could have been Xperia’s superpower. Imagine a phone with a Bravia-calibrated display, Alpha-level camera tuning, PlayStation Remote Play deeply integrated, and top-tier audio from the same engineers behind the legendary WH-1000XM series headphones. In an era when ecosystems define loyalty, Sony already had one. It just never stitched it together.
Compare that to Apple. A company once known just for computers. It turned the iPhone into the center of a trillion-dollar empire, syncing seamlessly with AirPods, Apple Watches, Macs, and more. In a few short years, Apple became the name in smartphones, headphones, and wearables.
Sony had the pieces. It just never put them together.
Or Samsung, which leaned hard into tight integration between its Galaxy phones, TVs, earbuds, and tablets. Sony had a head start, but it ran in circles.
Whether it was outdated corporate culture or sheer hubris, Sony’s mobile division was left to operate like an island, adrift in a company full of potential collaborators who never showed up. Consumers noticed. Xperia phones felt disconnected not just from Sony’s ecosystem, but from the broader smartphone conversation.
The Xperia 1 VII: A Premium Price for a Broken Promise
Despite Sony’s erratic smartphone schedule, I still find myself holding out hope. Every launch feels like a chance. Maybe this time they’ll get it right. Maybe this will be the phone that reminds the world what Sony can do.
The Xperia 1 VII was supposed to be that phone. On paper, it had everything: Qualcomm’s flagship chip, a stunning 4K display, a robust camera system powered by Alpha-grade software, and enough RAM to rival the best in the business. It should have been a triumph.
Instead, it stumbled out of the gate.
Early adopters were greeted not by excellence, but by random reboots. The issue was serious enough that Sony had to pause sales entirely. The cause? A faulty circuit board. This was confirmed only after days of speculation and mounting user frustration. Sony has since promised replacement units, but the damage was done. In a market this competitive, even giants can’t afford slip-ups.
And yet, for many fans, the problem wasn’t just the buggy hardware. It was that they couldn’t even buy the phone in the first place.
On Reddit, frustrated users across Europe report that the Xperia 1 VII is still unavailable, weeks after launch. Not delayed, just missing. Sony’s long-standing habit of releasing phones in slow, fragmented waves is nothing new, but it’s grown harder to justify. Chinese OEMs often launch in their domestic market first, but the Chinese market is massive. Sony doesn’t have that luxury. Japan isn’t big enough to float a global smartphone business, and without a serious footprint in the US or Europe, Sony’s phones risk becoming little more than curiosities for diehard fans.
The PlayStation Phone That Never Was
If there was one clear advantage Sony had over nearly every other phone maker on Earth, it was this: PlayStation.
The gaming division has long been one of Sony’s crown jewels. It is beloved, profitable, and deeply embedded in pop culture. And yet, despite owning both the hardware in Xperia and the ecosystem in PlayStation, Sony never truly capitalized on the obvious synergy.
Yes, there was the Xperia Play, a bold experiment over a decade ago that mashed a smartphone with a slide-out PlayStation controller. It was novel, even ahead of its time. But Sony let it die instead of evolving it. No PlayStation Plus integration, no mobile-exclusive titles, and no persistent PSN experience on mobile. Just silence.
This is especially baffling when you consider that console makers like Sony make most of their profits not from hardware, but from the games and services sold afterward. Mobile gaming, meanwhile, has become a multi-billion-dollar industry. Apple saw that shift early. Its services division generated over $90 million in 2024 by turning the iPhone into a hub for apps, subscriptions, and recurring revenue.
Sony could have done the same. A true PlayStation phone could have bundled cloud saves, trophy sync, mobile-friendly PS Plus tiers, and console-grade Remote Play. Xperia could have been a natural extension of the PlayStation brand.
Instead, Sony gave us the PlayStation Portal, a $200 streaming slab that only works over Wi-Fi and plays nothing on its own. In an era that values convergence and convenience, Sony chose fragmentation.
And once again, Xperia was left out of the ecosystem it should have led.
Sony’s presence in the smartphone market isn’t just fading. It’s evaporating, and we have the numbers to prove it.
In its 2023 financial report, Sony’s mobile division brought in JPY356 million. A year later, that dropped to JPY299 million. By 2025, it had fallen again to JPY279 million. That’s not a stumble, it’s a steady collapse. At this rate, a turnaround feels less like a long shot and more like a fantasy.
Go back even further, and the decline is even starker. In 2007, under the Sony Ericsson banner, the company shipped a staggering 103.9 million phones. Two years later, when it launched its first Android smartphone, it still managed 53 million units. But from there, the drop was relentless. By 2020, Sony was shipping just 2.9 million phones a year.
To put that in perspective: in 2020, Samsung shipped 255.7 million units. Apple? 201.1 million. Sony’s share of the global pie? About 1%. Practically invisible.
And in the US, it’s even worse. Aside from PlayStation and its popular line of headphones, Sony’s smartphone presence is so minimal that most market research firms don’t even list the brand by name. Instead, it’s banished to the “Others” category, a footnote in a market where Apple and Samsung dominate the stage. You can’t lose market share when you don’t even register.
You might think: Surely, Sony holds strong at home. But even that hope doesn’t hold up. In 2024, Apple commanded nearly half (49%) of Japan’s smartphone market. But Sony? Just 6%, trailing behind Sharp, which claimed 9% despite being virtually unknown outside Japan.
Sony isn’t just losing ground. It’s being erased from the map.
When Letting Go Is the Smartest Play
If Sony were a scrappy newcomer trying to gain market share, its struggles might be understandable. But this is Sony. We’re talking about a tech titan with unmatched heritage in consumer electronics and world-class imaging technology. The question isn’t whether Sony can turn things around. It’s whether they still want to.
There’s precedent for knowing when to bow out. LG, once a top-five smartphone brand, made the difficult but dignified decision to exit the market in 2021. It didn’t wait to be pushed out by irrelevance or declining margins. It left on its own terms, with a clear-eyed assessment of its place in the industry.
Compare that to Nokia and BlackBerry, brands that left the stage kicking and screaming. Both clung to relevance long after the world had moved on, cycling through pivots and licensing deals before finally fading into footnotes.
Sony, unfortunately, feels closer to the latter.
The Xperia 1 VII launched at a staggering €1,499, outpricing rivals like the Galaxy S25 Ultra, phones that offer more polished user experiences, better availability, and years of guaranteed updates. In this price bracket, expectations are sky-high, and Sony isn’t justifying it.
And then there’s Europe, which was once Sony’s strongest international market. In 2017, it held a 4.8% share there. Today, the company appears to be quietly withdrawing, pulling back from a region that once gave it global credibility.
Meanwhile, Sony’s imaging division continues to thrive. Its camera sensors are used by many smartphone makers such as Apple and Xiaomi. Maybe the writing is already on the wall. Xperia doesn’t need another rebrand or a Hail Mary flagship. It needs clarity. Because at this point, clinging to a shrinking niche with sky-high prices and botched rollouts simply isn’t visionary.
