Sony Mobile Drops from 'Top 5 Device Activations by Manufacturers' for the Holidays

The holiday season is the most important part of the year for many companies and likely their busiest. Christmas alone tends to be the biggest day of the year for new smart devices as millions wake up to new gadgets under their trees. We’ve already seen Sony Mobile sales hit a 4-year low with the company accounting for less than 1% of mobile devices activated in 2014. Unfortunately for them, 2015 isn’t looking much better as Sony Mobile failed to rank in the top 5 device activations by manufacturers.

Microsoft’s Nokia lost share from 2014, dropping from 5.8% to 2%. Sony fell out of the top five manufacturers all together, while Xiaomi made the cut for the first time with 1.5% of all new activations during Christmas week. This is especially striking since Christmas is not the biggest gifting day of the year in China

For comparison, Sony came in fourth place in 2014 with 1.6% of activations and LG finished things off with 1.4%. After the jump, the popularity of different devices of size.

The trend continues to be clear that consumers more and more want ‘phablets’ and less and less your traditional smartphone size.

Back in 2013, only 4% of new device activations during the week leading up to Christmas were phablets. Fast forward two years and a whopping 27% of all new devices were phablets. That’s doubling share in only 12 months!

Luckily for Sony, this is a space that can play to their strengths, especially when you look at the Xperia Z5 line which expands all the way to their 5.5-inch Xperia Z5 Premium. Add an Ultra model to the line like the Xperia C5 Ultra and Sony certainly has the products to compete. If they can just collectively understand what advertisement means and invest in a long term strategy that’s part consumer education on what Sony is and what they stand for while part a pitch for their products, there is little reason that Sony can’t compete with players like LG, Nokia, and even Samsung.