Branding & Strategy: The Rise and Fall of Sony Xperia Smartphones
It’s been a while since my last post here, so I thought I’d do something different and create a short series where I take a look at the branding and strategy of one of my favorite brands’ smartphone division: Sony Xperia.
Now, I have been a fan of Sony hardware products for as long as I can remember. And they have made my all-time favorite portable device with the PlayStation Portable. There’s just something about their design that strikes the perfect balance between elegance and functionality.
And while I think this also goes for their smartphones, Xperia phones have become a niche product. So in this series, I’m going to take a look at their history, some missed opportunities and what could have been.
The End of the Beginning
And to start things off, we’re going to take a look at the history and the rise and fall of Xperia smartphones. A history that starts with a collab many people will have fond memories of and operated under the name of Sony Ericsson.
Once a big player in the feature phone industry, they were ready to take on the smartphone market. And after the launch of the iPhone in 2007, they launched their answer a year later with the Sony Ericsson Xperia X1. The first Xperia phone.
The Xperia X1 was released by Sony Ericsson, but it was actually designed and built by HTC. This was way back when HTC was mostly operating in the shadows and built devices for other OEMs. It had a 3.0" screen and a slide-out QWERTY keyboard.
But most notably perhaps, it bet on the wrong OS. It ran on Windows Mobile. Outdated, even back then. Sony Ericsson’s workaround was found in the X-Panels. These were something between launchers and apps as we know them now, where each X-Panel took the place of a home screen but very much operated like an app.
Windows Mobile just wasn’t good enough, and the X-Panels couldn’t hide that. So in 2010, Sony Ericsson launched the first Xperia running Android. The Sony Ericsson Xperia X10.
Yes, you read that right. They went from the X1 (and its direct successor, the X2) to the X10. Sony has had issues with their smartphone naming scheme from the very beginning.
This was also their first big win in the smartphone industry and they offered the device in multiple sizes and formats to expand their customer base.
The base model had a 4.0" touchscreen, one of the first Snapdragon processors with a single core running at 1GHz. And it actually got better after launch with updates that added things like HD video recording and richer color support for the display, and took it all the way from Android 1.6 Donut to Android 2.3 Gingerbread.
The mini offered almost the same capabilities on a 2.5" display, with a processor with a slower CPU running at 600MHz, but the same GPU as its bigger variant. The Mini Pro added a physical slide-out keyboard in a form factor that was just marginally bigger than the non-pro Mini model.
The Xperia X10 line-up was Sony Ericsson’s first foray into Android. And while it showed promise and was a first indication of some of the things Sony has consistently done well, it also showed the first cracks in their strategy and approach.
The X10 was slightly underpowered compared to its main competitor, the Samsung Galaxy S. It ran on very similar hardware, but with a slightly worse camera and slightly less RAM and storage.
Unfortunately, they continued this trend with their follow-up devices. They stuck with a single core processor on the Xperia Neo and Xperia Arc, while the Galaxy S2 made the jump to a dual-core processor. They also offered less RAM and storage.
Their design language was amazing, and miles ahead of anything else on the market at that point. But overall, it was just a less compelling product than its competition.
And they knew, because they followed up the Xperia Arc with a revision that had a 40% faster CPU. But it was too late and the Xperia Neo V and Xperia Arc S were the last phones Sony Ericsson released.
A Short-Lived Peak
Sony bought out Ericsson and took full control in 2012 as Sony Mobile. That year was the start of a 3–year-peak-period for the brand. A period that started with the Xperia NXT line-up, which consisted of the entry-level Xperia U, the midrange Xperia P and the flagship model Xperia S.
That year also saw other releases that only demonstrated Sony’s lack of a coherent naming scheme further. Phones like the Xperia T, Xperia J and Xperia E were launched and somewhat seemed to fit the naming scheme. Even though the letters’ place in the alphabet had little to do with where it ranked in the line-up.
But then you also had other phones with actual names rather than letters appointed to them, like the Xperia miro, Xperia tipo and Xperia sola.
Where 2012 was the start of something amazing, 2013 was the confirmation year. That was the year they launched the very successful Xperia Z flagship line. The Xperia Z brought a new design language, an IP57 rating and 4G LTE support.
But the real winner was the Xperia Z1, released in the second half of the year. It had all the positives of the Xperia Z but added a better camera and a Snapdragon 800 processor.
And it (re-)introduced the Compact variant — last seen in the Xperia X10 line-up under the Mini moniker — for people who preferred smaller phones without compromise in a time where flagships only grew in size.
2014 was the last great year and saw releases of the Xperia Z2, the Xperia Z3 and the Xperia Z3 Compact. It marked an era where Sony was the first or one of the first smartphone manufacturers to introduce full HD video recording, 1080p displays, IP ratings all the way up to IP68 water and dust resistant.
The Beginning of the End
The follow-up to the extremely well-received Z3 came with the troubled Snapdragon 810 processor, notorious for its overheating problems. The thin frame of the Z3+ certainly didn’t help with this either. Despite all of its flaws, Sony decided to use that same Snapdragon 810 SoC on both their flagship releases that year.
One thing to laud Sony for, is that they continuously kept innovating. Like with the Z5 Premium, the first smartphone with a 4K display. Unfortunately, this innovation was held back by their reluctance to follow other trends in the industry.
They where late to incorporate fingerprint sensors, and they kept their design language just a bit too long. Their phones felt and looked premium, but also outdated while the industry moved towards new standards with smaller bezels, multiple cameras, OLED displays, higher refresh rates and taller aspect ratios.
Their identity crisis after the successful Xperia Z line only highlighted these problems more. They went from the Sony Xperia Z line, with Compact and Premium models, to the Xperia X and Xperia X Performance. Once again introducing a new naming scheme.
You also had the Xperia X Compact in that same model line, but it actually used the design language of the XZ model that replaced the short-lived Xperia X.
A New Identity
It was a mess and it took them a while to find back their identity. But they finally did just that.
The flagship in their current line-up is the Xperia 1. It’s a Premium model in anything but name, with an uninterrupted 6.5" 4K 120Hz OLED display, stereo front-facing speakers, a sleek 21:9 aspect ratio, dedicated camera button and a triple camera system offering an ultra-wide-angle and optical zoom as well as your regular main camera.
The Xperia 5 is what could be considered a compact version — though how compact is a phone with a 6.1" display — with the same functionality as the Xperia 1 but with a smaller screen at fullHD resolution rather than 4k.
Or that’s what it used to be. Their latest model of the Xperia 5 actually dropped a camera for a dual camera system rather than the 3 camera systems found on the Xperia 1 or previous Xperia 5 models.
The budget offering is found in the Xperia 10, and it really shows the strengths of the brand. It has an OLED display, great form factor, decent cameras for a budget phone, clean software and it’s a battery king. It’s not an iPhone SE or a Pixel a-series, but what it does, it does really well.
Wrap Up
In true Sony fashion, not everything is perfect though. I already mentioned the change in strategy for the Xperia 5. They are expensive devices aimed at a niche target audience.
And while the naming scheme is finally clear and consistent, it still isn’t the best with Roman numerals used to show subsequent versions of the same model. We’re now on the Sony Xperia 1 V — read as Sony Xperia 1 Mark 5, as well as he fifth iteration of the Xperia 5 and 10.
But this was the not-so-short summary — and trust me, I still left out a lot of the details — of Sony’s history in the smartphone industry. We’ll go over what they could’ve done differently at various points in their downfall in the next piece in this series.