Sony is far from giving up on its smartphones. In fact, the company’s recent flagship, the Sony Xperia 1 VIII, is enjoying strong sales. Sony’s executives, Shohachi Ike and Eri Kitazawa, revealed this during an interview with Japanese publication ITmedia Mobile. This is encouraging news if you’re a fan of Xperia phones. The Xperia 1 VIII brings several hardware and software upgrades to the table, especially to the camera system.
Sony touts strong sales of its Xperia 1 VIII flagship
The Sony Xperia 1 VIII is on the expensive side compared to its predecessor. In the company’s home soil, Japan, the price crossed the JPY 200,000 (~$1,256) mark. In Europe, the prices remained the same as the Mark 7: €1,500 (~$1,730) for the base 12/256GB model. That’s pretty high as it is. though. Well, despite the rising prices, Sony executives claim the sales have remained strong and that “customer satisfaction is very high.”
This isn’t limited to Japan. The sales in Europe have apparently “grown significantly,” courtesy of Sony strengthening its direct-to-customer sales channels (machine-translated). The executive didn’t share any numbers, though. But from the comments, it looks like Sony is quite happy with its performance.
Redesigned camera island and microSD card support
That’s about the sales part of the interview. The executive then talks about the cameras. This apparently had an impact on the design. As you know, Sony has redesigned the camera island to accommodate the larger telephoto image sensor. The executives note that the company did receive requests from users for a higher-quality sensor.
Sony ditched the variable zoom for a fixed 70mm lens. To recall, the Mark 7 had an 85-170mm variable lens, whose mechanism took up too much space, and getting a larger sensor in there would have made the phone too thick. The company switched to a larger 48MP sensor that enables 140mm lossless zoom, getting close to the Mark 7’s maximum zoom range.
One Sony executive notes that in their survey of reasons for purchasing the Xperia 1 VIII, microSD support came on top. The other added, “I believe the presence of the microSD slot and headphone jack is now an integral part of Xperia’s identity.”
No Xperia 5 series
The interview then asked about the existence of the Xperia 5 series. To which the Sony executive acknowledged that the lineup has been narrowed down. They note that the company conducts surveys regularly about market trends, customer spending habits, and how people use their phones.
While they recognize there is demand for devices around the JPY 100,000 (~$628) price range, the company believes it is currently more efficient to focus on its two main Xperia lines: the flagship 1 series and the 10 series. Sony has apparently not yet decided to introduce a new mid-range lineup.
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