LONDON: It does look as though times are not too good for the folks over at Sony where smartphones are concerned, never mind the fact that the kind of handsets that they come up with happen to be more than decent models that get the job done, and then some. In fact, Sony has already published its forecast for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2017, expecting to ship up to 20 million smartphones in the year.
That might sound like quite a respectable figure, but if one were to take it into context with last year’s figures in tow, then it would signal close to a reduction of nearly 20% from the 24.9 million handsets that it successfully shipped in the previous year.
Sony claims that the expected drop in sales can be attributed to “a reduction in mainly mid-range smartphone unit sales reflecting an increased focus on high value-added models, as well as a reduction in smartphone unit sales in unprofitable geographical areas where downsizing measures were implemented during the fiscal year ended March 31, 2016.”
