Skip to main content

Sony shuts China smartphone plant

Sony is to shut down its smartphone factory in China as it seeks to cut the losses of its mobile division.

According to Reuters, the Japanese electronics giant will shift production from Beijing to its plant in Thailand later this month.

The Thai facility will become Sony’s sole smartphone manufacturing facility, but the company will continue to outsource some production to contractors.

Sony China factory

Sony is a minor player in the smartphone space, commanding a market share of less than one per cent, with Europe and Japan its main markets. It also faces the same challenges facing the rest of the industry, including longer product refresh cycles, a perceived lack of innovation, and a lack of new markets to exploit.

However, Sony has continued to launch flagship devices, most notably the Sony Xperia 1, which was detailed at Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona last month.

The division is said to have lost £655 million in the current financial year, but the company is keen to retain the unit because of its strategic importance in the 5G era and the possible value it could add to the rest of its electronics portfolio. It is hoped the closure will help return Sony’s mobile business to profitability from 2020.

The company has stated the decisions is a purely business one and it is unrelated to ongoing trade tensions between the US and China. Intense competition in the sector and rising manufacturing costs saw Samsung close its largest factory in China late last year. It has retained another facility in Huizhou, Guangdong.

 The Mobile Industry Awards 2019 return on 6th June! To enter the awards visit www.mobileindustryawards.com Entry Deadline: 5pm on 29th March   



from TechRadar - All the latest technology news https://ift.tt/2YAXDHB
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The future of Magic Leap's promising AR efforts dim after layoffs

The Magic Leap Two is now further away than ever, unfortunately. Today in a blog post the augmented reality pioneer announced major layoffs and has decided to cut up to half of its workforce, according to some reports. The original Magic Leap One was supposed to be one of the first mainstream augmented reality headsets when it launched in 2018, but a high price point and lack of interest from developers left the headset high and dry after launch. According to the blog post, Magic Leap says it will be focusing its efforts on enterprise solutions (a statement HTC has made recently as well) and shift its focus away from consumer technology… at least for the time being.  The company has been open about creating a second headset that would offer improved specs for some time, but how that work will now have to go forward without half of the team , according to some estimates, remains to be seen. Is the window closing on augmented reality?  Although it’s just one company, Magic...
Post a Comment
Read more

Airship acquires SMS commerce company ReplyBuy

Airship is announcing that it has acquired mobile commerce startup ReplyBuy . The startup (which was a finalist at TechCrunch’s 1st and Future competition in 2016) works with customers like entertainment venues and professional and college sports teams to send messages and sell tickets to fans via SMS. It raised $4 million in funding from Sand Hill Angels, Kosinski Ventures, SEAG Ventures, Enspire Capital, MRTNZ Ventures and others, according to Crunchbase . Airship, meanwhile, has been expanding its platform beyond push notifications to cover customer communication across SMS, email, mobile wallets and more. But CEO Brett Caine said this is the first time the company is moving into commerce. While sports and concerts tickets might not be a booming market right now, Caine suggested that the company is actually seeing increased purchasing activity “in and around the Airship platform” as businesses try to drive more in-app purchases. He also suggested that both the COVID-19 pandem...
Post a Comment
Read more