Unless you’re an Apple or a Samsung, then you probably can’t have it all, at least in terms of global mobile markets. That’s what Japanese brand Sony has concluded, as they are making changes on the markets that they will be focusing on in terms of their smartphone business. In their recently concluded investor day, they reiterated their product strategy for the premium smartphone segment and then finally revealed their regional strategy, which up until now was not that clear.

They have now confirmed that the focus for this particular business segment would be East Asia (of course including their home base Japan), Europe, and the Middle East. However, they will now be expecting to “shrink” their presence in Brazil, China, India, and the US, the first three being the emerging markets in the past decade or so. Meanwhile, for Latin America and the other Asia Pacific regions, it will remain status quo and their business will be “preserved”.

One reason why they are defocusing on the four aforementioned countries is that their expected Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) for FY15-17 in terms of smartphone growth is just 0.3%. The estimate last year was +8.1% so this means a lot has changed in just over a year and so rather than focusing so much effort in these markets, their priority is to look at regions where they can “leverage its strengths to ensure profitability improvements.”

Another reason is that competition among low-cost Chinese and Indian players is expected to increase even more. So instead, Sony will focus on the high value-added premium segment since there are fewer competitors in this area as compared to the entry level and mid-tier segments.

VIA: Xperia Blog

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