While Sony Ericsson and then Sony Mobile have always had broad lineups of smartphones that addressed different market segments, they actually have not ever competed against dream-phones, those that represented the pinnacle of technology and were dreamed about by millions. But that is going to change soon.
Back in the days of mobile phones, Sony Ericsson never seriously competed against Nokia’s 7- and 8-series or Motorola Razr. In the world of smartphones, SE and then Sony Mobile did not succeed in fighting Apple iPhone, Nokia N-series and Samsung Galaxy S family. The reason was pretty simple: until the iPhone arrived, the market of expensive phones was pretty small and it was not financially viable for SE to enter it. Apple taught the market how to drive high-end gadgets into hands of millions and quickly gained serious rivals, such as Samsung Galaxy S. In the meantime, Sony Mobile’s market share dropped to below 2% in Q3 2012, according to Gartner.
In a bit to restart its smartphone business, Sony clearly needs to offer something that will be competitive against the flagship smartphones from Apple and Samsung Electronics. Apparently, Sony is working on one, a super one.
“In the near future we will create a flagship model that can compete with Apple's iPhone and Samsung's Galaxy S III," said Dennis Van Schie, sales and marketing head of Sony Mobile, in a conversation with the Financial Times Deutschland.
While no particular details are given about the handset at the moment, Mr. Schie implied that the smartphone will feature better integration of the devices with content from Sony's entertainment empire, which includes music, movies and television programs. Perhaps, Sony Mobile will also try to provide certain common functionality across all devices, creating an ecosystem within Android or Windows Phone ecosystems.
The head of Sony Mobile revealed that the company was not going to develop a broad family of media tablets as they are becoming commodities and it is hard to earn hefty profits selling them. Still, the Xperia Tablet line will consist of more than one model.
“We will bring other Android tablets on the market in addition to the existing Xperia Tablet, but not many. It has become very difficult to earn money with tablets,” said Mr. Schie.
Tags: Sony, Sony Mobile, Sony Ericsson, Android, Windows Phone, Apple, Samsung, iPhone, Galaxy, iOS
Comments currently:
7
Discussion started: 11/16/12 02:09:22 PM
Latest comment: 11/19/12 07:30:57 PM
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This sound great!! More competition at the high-end among the best worldphone makers can only mean many more choices for consumers, price competition and constant innovation.
In 2013 we should see 5 inch phones with 1080P screens:
http://www.gsmarena.com/r...oled_at_ces-news-5088.php
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Posted by: BestJinjo
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Date: 11/16/12 02:09:22 PM]
+ expand thread (4 answers)
- collapse thread
ARM cortex A15 can't fit into smartphones it uses too much power. Check anandtech review on the ARM chromebook. Qualcoom S4 also uses too much power because the phone overheats when its used.
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Posted by: j7
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Date: 11/16/12 02:30:05 PM]
Not true. You need to distinguish how power-efficient the A15 and Krait microarchitectures can be, as opposed to how efficient the current generation of tablet-optimized SoCs are making them.
The chips that you cite are optimized for tablets and are running the CPU at high clocks/voltages. In addition, the current S4 parts are on TSMC's 28 nm LP process, which is not their lowest leakage/power variant (at least not any more).
Samsung is less public about their process technologies, but based on clockspeed it appears that the chip used in the Chromebook was optimized for speed rather than for power. It is instructive to observe how Apple is able to fab both their regular (A5, A6, etc) and "X-series" (A5X, A6X) SoCs (system on chip) on the same Samsung process family. The part you cite in the Chromebook is the equivalent of an Apple X-series SoC.
It should be possible to get the A15 down within a much lower power envelope by reducing clockspeed and voltage, and by using a lower-leakage process variant like TSMCs 28-HPL (High-K, low-power).
Note in particular that:
1. Non-leakage power goes as clock speed times voltage
2. Max clockspeed is ~linear with voltage
This means that reducing clockspeed by ~30% reduces non-leakage power by ~50%. Couple that with a lower-leakage high-K process and you could easily cut overall power in half.
I'm personally not a huge fan of the ARM architecture, but one must be fair/honest about these things...
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Posted by: patrickjchase
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Date: 11/18/12 01:16:55 PM]
And then it still barely fit into a phone. Of course history repeats itself. This happened with ARM Cortex A8 it was a lot faster than ARM11 but it was inefficient just like the ARM Cortex A15. I am sure that the ARM Cortex A57 will use less power.
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Posted by: j7
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Date: 11/19/12 07:30:57 PM]
In 2020 we should see 10 inch phones. In 2050 we will travel around on top of 40" flying phones.
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Posted by: ET3D
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Date: 11/18/12 04:46:12 AM]
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Yet another $ony fail in the making
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Posted by: alpha0ne
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Date: 11/17/12 09:29:59 PM]
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I have lost faith in SE long time ago. But they used to have some good phones.
My old w550i served me well while I transitioned from a crappy LG GT540 to a Samsung Galaxy S1.
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Posted by: nitro912gr
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Date: 11/18/12 01:22:09 PM]
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