14 DAY TRIAL // Japanese mobile phone maker Sony Mobile has been long rumored to plan the release of a Windows Phone-based Xperia handset, yet nothing has been officially confirmed on the matter as of now, although many enthusiasts are still looking forward for this to happen.
Earlier this year, Sony was said to plan the launch of such a device by the end of the summer, specifically alongside the newly announced Windows Phone 8.1 Update 1, which has already arrived on existing devices as a Developer Preview version.
That hasn’t happened as of now, yet things might pan out in the end, especially with the IFA 2014 trade fair set to kick off in Berlin in early September, where Microsoft too will hold a press event, supposedly planning the launch of one or two new Lumia devices, the Lumia 730 and Lumia 830.
Sony will be present on the floor at IFA too, with a launch event already announced for September 3, most probably aimed at the release of a new flagship handset, the Xperia Z3, alongside some other new products.
The company’s Xperia Z series has proved very appealing to end users ever since the first device in the family was released at CES last year, but they still haven’t managed to prove more popular than other flagship phones out there, and chances are that Xperia Z3 will suffer a similar fate.
Sony is currently focused on the release of Android-based smartphones, but that has not helped it gain too much ground on the mobile market, as its latest financial results have shown.
For the three months ending June 30, 2014, the mobile phone maker announced operating loss amid lower unit sales, although the overall smartphone sales went up 10.1 percent, courtesy of a change in foreign currency rates.
Even so, the Japanese vendor is still lagging far behind other smartphone makers, including Samsung, and Apple, which are leading the smartphone area at the moment, as well as Chinese vendors such as Huawei and Lenovo, which have shown impressive growth over the past several quarters.
In fact, it seems that Sony has little room to grow in the Android segment, especially with Samsung dominating the area, and with smaller, local vendors enjoying increased popularity in their homeland markets (such as Xiaomi in China, and Micromax and others in India).
Thus, I believe that the company should consider looking at other mobile operating systems out there too, and that Windows Phone would be a great option for it at the moment.
For those out of the loop, I should note that Sony was a Microsoft partner in the past, and that the very first two smartphones in the popular Xperia lineup were running under Windows Mobile.
The OS had little chance to strive when Android and iOS came along, and Sony decided that it was better for it to move to Android, which it actually did back in 2009, when Xperia X10 was announced (though the smartphone arrived on shelves only in early 2010).
Back then, Xperia phones were released under the Sony Ericsson brand, though this changed in early 2014, and all of the newer devices in the series are coming from Sony Mobile now.
The company has managed to make a name for itself with these smartphones, mainly courtesy of the great build that all of them feature, and I believe that this would help it a lot if it launches a Windows Phone 8.1 Xperia.
Undoubtedly, should one such smartphone arrive on the market this year, it would be a high-end device, which means that it would most probably include about the same hardware capabilities that Xperia Z2 sports at the moment.
This would also mean that Windows Phone would gain a flagship handset, something that it certainly needs badly. Microsoft might not release such a device before the end of this year (although it does have Lumia 930 at the moment), and the rumored Windows Phone 8.1-based HTC One M8 might not be enough to give the platform the boost it desperately needs.
The OS has lost some market share over the past year, currently being present on only 2.5 percent of all smartphones out there, as it feels an increasing pressure coming from Android and iOS, currently the two largest mobile platforms in the world.
Over the past several months, Windows Phone has seen a great deal of improvements, and it is currently a viable choice for users when compared to said two OSes, yet the fact that there are only a few devices running under it, and that they all come from the same vendor is hurting its market presence.
Of course, other vendors out there have already announced plans to release Windows Phone 8.1 devices this year, and some of them have already done so, but the platform still needs some big names on its side in order to truly succeed.
Vendors such as HTC, LG, Huawei, and others have already partnered with Microsoft for the release of such devices, and are expected to announce new smartphones running under the OS later this year, but there is still a lot of room for others to do so.
Considering the position it finds itself into at the moment, I do believe that Sony should strongly consider launching an Xperia handset running Windows Phone 8.1 right now, as it would prove highly successful in the current market situation.
On the one hand, Sony needs to find new ways to grow its sales volume, thus also working on increasing profits, while on the other hand, Windows Phone would benefit a lot from having another leading phone maker releasing devices running under it.
Of course, that does not mean that the company will indeed make the move, despite the fact that it has been rumored to have such a plan, and despite a need for such a smartphone. However, I’m sure that there are many enthusiasts out there who are dreaming of the day when that will happen.