There has been a lot of chatter about Sony’s Xperia smartphones recently, with many believing that the company is set to exit the smartphone market altogether.
It’s not hard to see why; we’ve only seen a single Xperia launch this year with the Xperia 1 VII, and even then, it’s best described as a minimal upgrade over last year’s 1 VI – and there’s no word yet on successors to the Xperia 5 and 10 lines.
However, Sony has pushed back on the chatter with the company’s CFO reiterating that Xperia remains core to the broader Sony strategy.
During a financial results briefing in Japan, CFO Lin Tao described smartphones as a “very important business for us” that will be “nurtured” in future.
She also stressed that Sony’s long-running investment in communication tech extends beyond smartphones themselves, suggesting that R&D isn’t being wound down anytime soon.
It has been a tough year for Sony’s Xperia range
It hasn’t been an easy year for Sony where the Xperia range is concerned.
The Xperia 1 VII launch was a bit of a mess, with Sony halting sales in its home region of Japan shortly after launch amidst reports of units suffering from shutdowns and random reboots. We didn’t even get a review sample here at Trusted Reviews until July, two months after its initial May 2025 announcement, due to the issues.
Sony eventually launched a replacement programme, and apologised to affected users in Japan at the beginning of the briefing.
As noted earlier, it doesn’t help that the Xperia 1 VII is the only new Xperia so far this year, with precious little chatter about follow-ups to the Xperia 5 or 10 ranges. In fact, with Sony canning last year’s Xperia 5 VI update, that model hasn’t been updated since September 2023.
The Xperia 10 line has also had a fairly consistent release history, with Sony seemingly preferring a yearly June launch for its budget-focused model – the V and VI went on sale in June in 2023 and 2024 respectively – but we’ve long passed that point in 2025.
That vacuum has fuelled speculation around the brand’s supposed retreat from Europe and rumours that Sony will use third-party manufacturers for future high-end phones, rather than handling everything in-house as has been the case until now.
A broader strategy at play
Sony CFO Sue Lin also hinted at the company’s broader strategy at the financial results briefing, noting that “communication technology is used for things other than smartphones,”.
That’s pretty telling, as Xperia has long been a hybrid of Sony’s imaging, display and audio tech, and that cross-pollination looks set to continue.
However, we’d wager that Sony fans need more than words at this point.
If Sony wants its fans to stick around in the long term, it needs to double down on its smartphone efforts after the recent Xperia 1 VII debacle, and also be clearer about the roadmap for its compact and mid-range alternatives. Whether it’ll do that, however, is yet to be seen…
