Sony Xperia 1 VI is not applauded, why is the Japanese mobile phone decayed so much

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2024-05-16 14:34Posted in Shanghai Digital Creators

Sony's new flagship Xperia 1 VI debuted, but it did not cause a wave in the mobile phone market, and the bandits did not shout "Sony Dafa is good". In fact, Sony is just a microcosm of Japanese mobile phone brands, in the past ten years, the presence of Japanese mobile phones has become weaker and weaker, and it has been copied by Apple's iPhone, according to IDC statistics, in 2023, the iPhone market share in Japan will be as high as 51.9%, why do Japanese mobile phones frequently lose in the era of smart phones?

In the era of feature phones, Japanese mobile phones have swept the world, for example, Sony Ericsson W550 has excellent sound quality, enough to replace ordinary walkmans, Sharp 920SH has a leading time3.2-inch Full WVGA giant screen, even if there are only parallel imports, it is also sought after by Chinese consumers. The plummeting status of Japanese mobile phones occurred in the era of smart phones, that is, in the past ten years, what factors have led to these great changes?

The peculiarity of the Japanese costume

Japan is a very special market, the mobile phone industry is no exception, Japanese operators have long monopolized mobile phone sales, people buy mobile phones often to the operator to buy a bundled package of mobile phones, that is, contract machines, if you want to buy a mobile phone separately and apply for a mobile phone card, it is difficult to operate. After monopolizing the sales channel, operators have a strong influence on mobile phone manufacturers and can intervene in the design of mobile phone software and hardware. This brings a problem, consumer demand must be transmitted to mobile phone manufacturers through operator transit, mobile phone manufacturers can not understand the changes in market demand in a timely manner, and the process is also prone to distortion, and it is natural to suffer losses when the feature phone is transformed into a smart phone.

Under the monopoly position, operators are trying their best to harvest Japanese consumers, not only to sign a two-year contract to buy a machine, but also to pay for communication and traffic, when the traffic fee remains high, how can consumers brush social media on mobile phones, watch dramas, there is no new demand, and mobile phones are naturally not in a hurry to update. This special national situation has led to the disconnection between the perception of Japanese mobile phone manufacturers and the world.

Later, the Japanese government and operators realized this problem, and in 2011 Docomo took the lead in officially unlocking mobile phones, but unfortunately most operators followed up after 2015, and in 2013, a large number of non-customized machines entered the market, and in 2016, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications asked to stop large network transfer discounts, go to 2-year contracts, reduce tariffs, etc., but these measures came too late.

And unlike the Chinese market, which is vigorously developing smartphones, the Japanese mobile phone market is very polarized, with young and middle-aged people willing to accept the new thing of smartphones, while people over 60 years old are still using old-fashioned clamshell machines. According to the population estimate released by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications of Japan on September 17, 2023, as of September 15, there were 36.23 million elderly people over 65 years old in Japan, accounting for 29.1% of the total population.

Stubborn and good "Gundam"

The contract machine model, high communication costs, and polarized user needs are all objective factors hindering the development of Japanese mobile phones, and Japanese mobile phone manufacturers themselves also have many problems.

One is stubbornness, because smart phones are based on touch screens as the core of interaction, so they have eliminated various forms of flip covers, slide covers, and full keyboards, but Japanese mobile phones are still insisting on launching flip machines, including many flip smartphones. For example, Sharp launched a clamshell machine AQUOS Keitai 4 in 2022, which runs Android, but it comes with a nine-square keyboard and a 540*960 resolution 3.4-inch screen, and the internal configuration is an antique-level Qualcomm Snapdragon 215 processor, 1GB memory and 8GB ROM, the configuration is staggering.

If the AQUOS Keitai 4 is the stubbornness of Japanese mobile phone manufacturers for the Japanese domestic market, then Sony is stubborn for global users on the screen of Xperia mobile phones. In order to improve the screen-to-body ratio, notchs, hole-digging holes, and pills have become the mainstream choice of smartphones, and SonyXperia 1 series models have adhered to the non-punch screen in order to adhere to the concept of a complete screen, and as a result, the top of the screen had to be set aside to accommodate the camera, resulting in a significant decrease in the screen-to-body ratio. In addition, the Xperia 1 cannot share parts with other phones on the market, resulting in high costs, and even more so among consumers.

The Japanese also have a penchant for Gundam, and they always want to win the final victory with the "Final Battle Weapon", and this is no exception to the mobile phone manufacturers. In recent years, there are also a lot of such products, for example, Sony launched Xperia 1 in 2019 using a 6.5-inch OLED, the resolution reaches an amazing 4K (1644*3840), however, the 4K resolution can only be activated under a very few apps such as Netflix, and other applications and games can only be displayed in 1096*2560 resolution, which increases the cost but has no practical value. On the just-released Xperia 1 VI, Sony finally cut off the 4K screen, but the screen fell to the 1080P screen at the level of a thousand-yuan machine, and the 3.5mm audio interface was still retained, full of slots.

Like to make Gundam is not only Sony, Sharp launched the industry's first mobile phone equipped with a 1-inch CMOS sensor + Leica mark in 2021AQUOS R6, with 20.2 million pixels and an aperture of F1.9, but the lens focal length is equivalent to a full-frame 19mm angle of view, that is to say, the main camera belongs to an ultra-wide lens, creating a precedent for the main camera to be an ultra-wide-angle lens. The 1-inch outsole + Leica label is scary at first glance, but it is actually a difficult lens to use.

If the problem of hardware likes to create spectacles can be solved through product iteration, then the problem of software has always been a pain for Japanese mobile phones and even Japanese products, so Sony gave up the treatment and announced in 2022 that it would deepen its cooperation with Meizu Flyme, using Flyme to make up for the lack of Xperia's localization experience.

epilogue

According to IDC data, the top five sales in the Japanese market in 2023 are Apple, Sharp, Google, Samsung, Kyocera, and Lenovo, and Sony has fallen out of the top five and belongs to the Other column. But it is this Other, the Xperia mobile phone under it is already the most international and familiar product of Japanese mobile phones, and it also represents the most advanced technology of Japanese mobile phones, such as the Xperia 1 V, in addition to sticking to the 4K screen, it also debuted the Exmor T dual-layer transistor pixel stacked image sensor, and used an 85mm-125mm optical zoom lens, the new Xperia 1 The VI telephoto lens is upgraded to 85mm-170mm smooth zoom, which comes with a 120mm telephoto macro mode, and the magnification reaches 2X, which are leading and even unique technologies.

However, Gundam can not save Japanese mobile phones, the era of feature phones gave birth to a unique environment of Japanese clothing, resulting in Japanese mobile phone factories difficult to adapt to the great changes in the era of smart phones, the starting is backward, the Japanese market environment has affected the judgment of mobile phone manufacturers on product form and function, coupled with stubbornness, like to build Gundam, weak software capabilities and many factors superimposed, even if one or two technologies are leading, it is impossible to give birth to meet the needs of global consumers and balanced mobile phones, the decline of Japanese mobile phones is not accidental.

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