14 DAY TRIAL // Following the recent acquisition of Ericsson’s share in the Sony Ericsson joint venture, Sony has recently confirmed plans to rebrand the entire line-up of smartphones sometime next year.
According to Times of India, citing a Sony senior executive, the Sony Ericsson brand will be dropped in mid-2012 and new Sony-branded smartphone will be announced as soon as June-July.
Sony Ericsson lost a huge chunk of its market share due to its Xperia phones failing against HTC, LG and Motorola smartphones. However, the company plans to regain the lost ground with a better marketing and, obviously, improved devices.
The acquisition of Ericsson's part will be officially completed as early as January 2012, as the transaction was already approved by both Sony and Ericsson.
In addition, Sony is determined to integrate its smartphone business with its other operations, including PlayStation video game consoles, PCs, tablets and Bravia TVs.
Furthermore, Sony Ericsson’s executive VP and Head of Sales and Marketing, Kristian Tear told Times of India that by next year Sony will become a pure play smartphone brand as its line of feature phones will be introduced on the market.
“A lot of planning goes into getting the branding right but we will be done by middle of next year. It will also mean that the marketing and advertising investments will go up. We haven't been as fierce as we were a few years back but we will step it up, refocus and invest more in brand-building in select markets and India is one of those markets,” concluded Tear.
In the same news, it appears that render of a supposed upcoming Sony branded smartphone has just leaked via Xperia Blog. Even though the picture in question might be a mockup, it should give us an idea of how the new Sony branded smartphones will look like next year.