TOKYO — Sony’s Xperia Z smartphone, which went on sale in
February, has already sold almost a million units by some estimates. But NTT
DoCoMo, Japan’s largest mobile carrier, will soon stop selling it. The Xperia Z
has not even hit the United States market yet: T-Mobile says the model will
make its debut on its network in the coming weeks.
But it is already a has-been in Japan. DoCoMo has turned its
attention to a new phone, the Sony Xperia A — a model with fewer features that
has not won the stellar praise showered on the Z.
“It’s time for a new model,” said Mai Kariya, a DoCoMo
representative in Tokyo. “We’re finished with the Xperia Z, and now focusing on
the Xperia A.”
As Sony banks on smartphones to turn around its struggling
electronics business, it faces an increasingly bothersome obstacle at home: the
demands of Japan’s powerful cellphone carriers, which remain obsessed with
constant model updates.
For years, Japan’s three largest mobile network companies
have pressed phone makers here to update their handsets every three or four
months, providing Japanese consumers a dazzling array of newfangled phones and
features each season. Phones with digital TV broadcast receivers were once all
the rage; a phone without it was never going to sell. Then it was thumbprint
scans; you’d be hard pressed to find those on many phones today. The same is
true of swiveling screens, and to a lesser extent, electronic wallets.
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