It’s no secret that Sony’s been slow to the smartphone races. Like Microsoft who sat back during the crucial first three to four years, Sony has been slowly building up their portfolio with a new breed of Android smartphones to combat Apple and Samsung. Part of Sony’s strategy to get back into the mobiles war entailed for the company to break off their 10 year joint venture with Ericsson and bring all mobile operations in house under Sony Mobile which they’ve now done. Under new Sony CEO, Kaz Hirai, Sony also appointed Kunimasa Suzuki as the new President and CEO of Sony Mobile which now oversees Sony’s smartphone, tablet and VAIO division.

While in 2011, Sony released a wide array of phones, they companies line seemed too vast and sporadic, instead of a unified line of devices which built upon each other. With us nearing the half way mark in 2012, it’s clear that Sony Mobile is headed in a different direction with the Xperia ion, Xperia S, Xperia P, and Xperia U which all share similar design traits and features. Unlike previous years which each Sony smartphone different from one and other, Sony can now better leverage their unified design to help reduce costs and share components, something much harder in years past. Even though the Sony Mobile of today seems on paper drastically different than the Sony Ericsson of the past, Kaz Hirai thinks they need to do more, a lot more.

 “I talked about some of the initiatives that we’ve embarked on in the time-to-market area where we are literally cutting by half the time to market for the Xperia smartphones“ 

Kaz believes that in order for Sony to compete with the likes of Apple, Samsung and even HTC and LG, they need to be able to bring phones from conception to retailers in half the time as they have been.

  “So it’s those kinds of improvements, number one, and again making sure that we have products that really consumers will appreciate and bringing it quickly to market, and that’s going to be very key in making sure that we gain more traction in the mobile space than we’ve had before“ 

With the post PC world beginning to ramp up in speed as more consumers transition to tablets and smartphones, its still not too late for Sony to leverage assets like PlayStation and build a unique line of portable devices. It remains to be seen if this new push will have any affects on Sony’s 2012 line or if Kaz Hirai’s and Kunimasa Suzuki vision begin to take shape in 2013.

Discuss:

Will a more speedy releases from Sony help them gain market share?

[Via XperiaBlog]