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< Esato Forum Index > Sony Ericsson / Sony > General > Sony Ericsson Revising its lo-cost phone strategy Bookmark topic

Apparently, sales of Sony Ericsson's low cost (sub £60) handsets for 2007/2008 had not been as successful as the company had hoped for and according to this news source:

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Good news for those of us (everyone) wanting to see the shift back to higher end devices.



Full article: Digitimes Telecom

[ This Message was edited by: goldenface on 2007-12-13 11:10 ]
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Posted: 2007-12-13 12:10:11
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Hi all,

Well what a surprise that is who would of guessed that maybe it wasn't such a great strategy after all!!

As i said a long time ago there is nothing wrong with offering a wide range of products so that those who aspire to the best products can have a product from that company whilst moving through the range towards the Flagship products but focusing on the low end was never going to be the smart thing to do, well that was and is MO.

Marc

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[ This Message was edited by: Dogmann on 2007-12-13 11:42 ]
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Posted: 2007-12-13 12:42:41
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Funny how most of us knew this strategy would backfire even before the company knew itself!
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Posted: 2007-12-13 12:45:54
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At last ! The penny finally dropped !


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Posted: 2007-12-13 12:48:29
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I'm sceptical. I don't neccessarily see that this equals the end result you (and I) are hoping for. It will be enormously difficult to reverse out of low end phones. A lot of time and money will have been spent setting up and maintaing the infustructure to support distribution channels. Personnel, machinery, factory space and resources etc... You can't just decide one day to flip a switch and change.
At best I would guess this means that they will be trying to encompass more of the middle market, perhaps a few more high spec phones than in in 2005-7. However, for those of us hoping that their focus becomes high end phones, I'm afraid that is years away at best and probably won't happen at all. Market share is something no manufacturer will give up, simply to become a niche supplier.
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Posted: 2007-12-13 13:09:39
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Wouldn't this be one of the benefits of outsourcing production?

I think the low-end focus was more aimed at emerging markets as this is where the expansion was taking place however, this will also mean greater margins when it returns to the upper end of the scale and SE has never had any trouble producing hit phones there.


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Posted: 2007-12-13 14:48:09
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maybe one of the resons why flint had to go...


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Posted: 2007-12-13 15:30:22
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Well se always had the problem of being expensive and you can't be that when you're trying to be cheap. All the J series are plain rubbish. I couldn't buy one if I wanted to because it would be so stupid. And even moving up all other SE phones are expensive for their category. The problem is SE likes high volumes with operators but doesn't do enough to conquer areas where nokia is super dominant, like MENA. SE's products are generally ok in specs, they just need to lose 10-15% of their price to be competitive.
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Posted: 2007-12-13 16:25:08
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They earn some market share at low segment. But for the money it was not same as the highends phones..

How ever there is still lot of people who buys budget phones worldwide.. And I have never owned a budget phone from SE and I won't do it either.. That's still great new for technical freaks that SE changes strategy..

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Posted: 2007-12-13 16:36:02
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This is too bad - I thought had some sharp low-end phones lately, like the T250.

BTW, I'm not sure about the rest of the world, but in the US, Nokia is always the priciest in a given type of phone. N73's still cost ~$350 here, where as K850i prices are fast dropping to ~$450. Only Motorola's depreciate more

Back to the topic, maybe the strategy should be to (1) focus on mid- to high-end phones, (2) figure out the most profitable way to trickle these down to the low end, and (3) keep pushing the envelope during step (1).

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Posted: 2007-12-13 17:43:43
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