14 DAY TRIAL // Sony has big plans for its mobile division. Shortly after the company purchased Ericsson’s share in the Sony-Ericsson joint-venture, Sony announced its first upcoming devices branded with the Sony logo, Xperia S and Xperia ion.
Although the Japanese company confirmed plans to integrate its smartphone business with televisions, PCs, tablets and console gaming operations, in order to save costs and have a better development strategy.
Sony is still trying to compete on the Android smartphone market, even though last year posted a $325 million loss (around €247 million). Given the almost lack of interest from its Swedish counterpart, Sony-Ericsson Xperia lineup has not achieved the momentum the company would have hoped for in 2011.
During a recent Q&A in Japan, the folks at AV Watch report that Sony’s new President and CEO, Kazuo Hirai, made some statements regarding the future of the Playstation Vita OS, as well as its potential to become an operating system for smartphones and not just a gaming platform.
Furthermore, Av Watch quoted Senior Vice President Yoshio Matsumoto, who was more specific on Vita OS’ capabilities and replied to a question by saying “If you’re asking if we’ve made it in a way that’s expandable, so that it’s possible to apply to smartphones and tablets on top of achieving the high responsiveness we need for gaming devices — it is possible.”
However, while Sony is exploring this idea of putting its Vita OS on smartphones, the company has no intentions of doing so in the near future.
In this regard, Mr. Matsumoto said “That doesn’t mean that we’re applying it to smartphones and tablets at this point in time, but it’s been designed with expandability in mind.”
Bringing together more businesses like mobile, PCs, console gaming and tablets is an interesting idea, especially if Sony is also able to offer customers the environment needed to rule them all.