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Fad-Loving Japan May Derail a Sony Smartphone

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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