I’m not the only one who thinks Sony is the biggest threat to Nokia
By Stefan Constantinescu on Tuesday, January 30th, 2007 at 12:40 PM PST In Ideas and rants
I first mentioned this hypothesis when I made my personal post on the 28th:
If someone at Sony Ericsson (NYSE: SNE) or Motorola (NYSE: MOT) offered me a job I would take
it in a heart beat. I think Nokia (NYSE: NOK) is in the best position to help make
the ideas I have in the back of my head a reality, but I have no
problem working with an underdog to help them rise to the top. Sony, I
believe, can overtake Nokia in the mid to high end space if they played
their cards right.
Then Charlie Schick chimed in a day later:
I remember when I thought Sony Ericsson, just after the merger, had only a few months to live. And indeed, they basically fell off the map.
But, wow, they’ve methodically delivered and amazed folks with their devices. Now, they are like the Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) of the mobile world – leaders who have fallen so low, only to keep their chin up and become someone who is the model in design and style.
Way to go.
Today (a day after Charlie) DigiTimes is saying the same thing:
Nokia expanded its leadership position in the mobile handset market in 2006, shipping more units than its next two closest competitors combined, according to research firm iSuppli.
However, the biggest waves in the market in 2006 were made by Sony Ericsson, which in the fourth quarter posted the largest on quarter growth of all mobile-phone makers, with shipments rising 61.5% to 26 million units, up from 16.1 million units during the same period in 2005. The joint venture between consumer electronics giant Sony and telecommunications specialist Ericsson enjoyed a great 2006, achieving more than 15% growth in the second, third and fourth quarters of 2006.
"Sony Ericsson is targeting its entire product line at the mid-to-high range of the market and just recently has started entering the emerging low-cost handset market," said Tina Teng, wireless communications analyst at iSuppli. "This has contributed to the company’s accelerated growth in 2006. Plus, Sony Ericsson’s products appeal to every regional market globally, because its camera- and music-enabled phones hit the sweet spot in terms of desirable handset features."
Why are people buying more Sony phones? That’s a rhetorical question, but something Nokia should be asking itself right about now.
Personally I think that some of their models are down right sexier than anything Nokia makes. Touch screens offer an attractive feature set. The Walkman brand is very strong.
Definitely a company to watch.
thats absolutely right. Sony did not went head on against nokia as nokia was a big player but with its product line, it is slowly overtaking nokia.
The quality of sony eric is far better than nokia phones in terms of software and hardware. I have practically used all nokia phones leaving some very ugly models. I have experinced all version of s40, s60 s80 as well as s90.
Nokia have software issues with virtually all the phones and even a series 40 phone gets freeze very often. Even the low end phones have software and hardware issues.
i dont deny that sony ercicsson does not have this issues but not as much as nokia has.
S60’s multitasking is still not that good as you cannot run web browser and opera browser simulataneously and not only that, the basic capability of phone which is making and receiving calls is not that satisfactory as the phone gets heated up very soon.
I remember, my nokia 6280 lost network and the service center kept it for more than i month to finally replace the phone.
This happens in one of the most potential market of the world – India.
If nokia keeps on offering this kind of products and services, then sony ericsson will not need to try really hard to take over nokia as nokia will itself make customer shift brand due to low satisfaction it provides.
Sony ericsson next step should be producing symbian platform smart phones with non screen touch to further eat nokia’s market share and incorporating carl ziess lens in its high end camera phones.
SE should also highlight its product lines by advertising its poducts into vrious categories such as music, multimedia, business, as nokia has done by introducing N Series targetting at multi media users and E series at business users.
Sadly, though, SE I think is limited until they start putting damn end/send buttons on their phones. WTF is a phone without end/send buttons? That’s like having a radio with no volume control.
SE is not much of threat to Nokia in the high end, at least not yet. In the mid-range more, i.e. the K800 etc are doing exceedingly well, and Nokia should certainly offer the sweet candy type of UI animated graphics as an option as well (although I personally find the SE UI too busy, too candy candy after a while). Also, it is a completely different ball game to have 5-10% market share from having a 20++% market share. For now I really don’t see SE having the muscle, the organization, logistics, marging that would be needed for it to really start threatening Nokia or Moto. SE has done great though within its slice of the market.
I had a lot of Ericsson, Sony and then SonyEricsson phones in the past. I enjoyed them a lot; I always liked their style, their menu, UI and went back to Nokia only because I don’t like P-series phones. To me e61 is the best smart phone in an industry at this moment. But SonyEricsson has a lot of potential.
Everybody has bugs, but when you own 30% + of the market you don’t get away with that easyly.
Remember for ex. that Three had a SE planned for the X-series as well, but had to drop it, because it was so buggy.