Sony Ericsson’s CEO talks dual-core phones, Windows Phone and the US market

Sony Ericsson’s Chief Executive Officer, Bert Nordberg, has been candidly talking in an interview with the Wall Street Journal. The WSJ asked, amongst other things, where are your dual-core & LTE smartphones? This is an area in which SE remains far behind the Android competition. His reply was that “we are quite careful throwing ourselves into new technology, simply because there is no guarantee that consumers will buy, just because we develop it.”
He also dismissed seeing a Windows Phone from Sony Ericsson anytime soon. “I wouldn’t feel comfortable investing in a platform that isn’t as good as the one that we currently use,” said Nordberg although he remained “curious” about the platform.
Nordberg bemoaned the lack of progress in the United States, saying SE “underestimated how fast we would be able to penetrate the U.S. market“. Focus is now on broadening the US portfolio, following on from the Xperia PLAY’s success in forming relationships with both Verizon and AT&T.
Sony Ericsson has been exiting the feature phone market, contributing to a drop in SE’s global market share from 4.3% in Q3 2009 to 1.7% in Q2 2011. Currently smartphones contribute 70% of its portfolio, however Nordberg expects that they will only be selling smartphones by Summer 2012.
Despite fears over a weaker global economy, Nordberg dismissed that Sony Ericsson was “heading towards catastrophe“, although he was concerned about consumers delaying phone purchases as it would have a big impact on quarterly sales numbers. Sony Ericsson is due to report Q3 results on 14 October 2011.
This report might not be relevant to this (Kenya or African) market but it sure gives a pointer as to what direction this company is headed and what we should expect from Sony Ericsson. However the admitting by the CEO that they underestimated how fast they were to penetrate the American market should be a lesson on how they are to make their presence felt in Africa. This should be from the timely availing of the products in the market, decentralized decision making to aggressive marketing and last but not least accessible customer care. They do not need to reinvent the wheel for they can learn from the likes of Samsung and Nokia who have gone all local and the key brands to learn from not forgetting Huawei who are the new but very promising entrants.
This comes after 10 years since the Sony Ericsson brand was launched.
Source: Wall Street Journal