What is your favourite Sony Xperia of 2012 so far?

Recently on my way home, I sat next to this lady that had just bought herself a brand new Sony Xperia U. As usual, I couldn't help myself but admire her piece of cellular gadget and boy wasn't she a looker! I mean the phone lol.  I was wowed by the way the lady described the phone and how she just can't put it down. Being the person I am, I borrowed the phone and I can admit that it just felt right from the slick design to the flawless android os with the classic Sony customization, 3D sound that brings the music alive in your ears. She said that she had never been a Sony Ericsson fan but this low range Sony phone had her so taken.

I know the market is crazy over android and there seems to be only but one player that has got it going on with regard to market share as their phones are well thinly spread when it comes to market segmentation. It is no lie that Samsung is the king of Android in Kenya and it has not come easy. Other contender for the number one spot is Huawei thanks to Safaricom who used there Ideos range for market penetration with regard to increase data consumption.

At the start of the year, we didn’t expect Sony Mobile to release significantly more handsets in 2012 than it did in 2011. Last year it launched ten handsets (Xperia active, Xperia arc, Xperia arc S, Xperia mini, Xperia mini pro, Xperia neo, Xperia neo V, Xperia PLAY, Xperia pro and Xperia ray). So far this year, Sony Mobile has launched eleven handsets (Xperia acro S, Xperia go, Xperia ion, Xperia miro, Xperia neo L, Xperia P, Xperia S, Xperia sola, Xperia tipo, Xperia tipo dual and Xperia U) with more expected to be announced at IFA 2012 at the end of this month.

There is a fair argument to be made that perhaps Sony is releasing too many phones and perhaps a tighter focus on a smaller number of handsets would yield better sales. However, the fact that some of these handsets are being targeted to emerging markets (is Kenya one of them?) at lower price points should mean a much wider distribution and accessibility across regions.

If you have been a frequent reader of this blog then you will have noticed that I am a big fun of Android and I eat and sleep Xperia but that said, it does not stop me from being a tough love giver. When I heard that Sony was coming back in the phone market I was excited by the fact that they had a lot to with less effort since they are established as a brand. I mean who doesn’t know about Sony all over the world.

With a majority of its 2012 NXT Xperia range of phones being targeted at the emerging market. It’s funny when I hear Sony describing its products as “aspirational” in a market like Kenya where even its flagships are selling out of stock. This is being a Samsung and Nokia world, Sony thinks that it will take it a very long time to make it here. Compared to the likes of Samsung and Nokia who have had quite a success here by setting up shop and investing in marketing; Sony Middle East has chosen not to invest here hence the phones sales still perform just the way Sony Ericsson did. I remember buying my first SE phone from Dubai and the only few that found their way into the Kenyan market were owned by die-hard fans and Europeans for it was the bestselling brand in Europe before the advent of iPhone. Contrary to the old school sourcing of SE phones, you can now easily find the 2011-2012 range phones in most shops in town but that will be just it.

I might be wrong on this but many at times I have never been wrong by stating that Sony Ericsson had the most out of this world accessories that could win over any one regardless o their age or gender. Keep in mind that this one or maybe the only phones manufacture that has had its phones featured in the James Bond movies. How about the recent use of Sony products in the spider man movie and the li

My excitement about Sony doing mobile phones was tremendous and I remember staying up all night just to here listen to the key note speech  which I admit was not all that. If I can recall, the Sony stated that its ambition to be the number one brand on the Android platform was still in place and hence a big amount was set aside for marketing. The phones that were announced were not up to the competition as they run on dual core while competitors like Samsung and HTC had moved to Quad core and super AMOLED.  I am not trying say that quad cores make a phone faster as any mobile phone techie will tell you that it is all about the quality of the software as well as the RAM.

Sony Mobile’s NXT range comes with a technology that holds much. Near field communication (NFC) is a set of standards for smartphones and similar devices to establish radio communication with each other by touching them together or bringing them into close proximity, usually no more than a few centimeters. Present and anticipated applications include contactless transactions, data exchange, and simplified setup of more complex communications such as Wi-Fi.^[1]Communication is also possible between an NFC device and an unpowered NFC chip, called a "tag

NFC traces its roots back to radio-frequency identification, or RFID. RFID allows a reader to send radio waves to a passive electronic tag for identification, authentication and tracking.

• 1983 The first patent to be associated with the abbreviation RFID was granted to Charles Walton.^[15]
• 2004 Nokia, Philips and Sony established the Near Field Communication (NFC) Forum^[16]
• 2006 Initial specifications for NFC Tags^[17]
• 2006 Specification for "SmartPoster" records^[18]
• 2006 Nokia 6131 was the first NFC phone^[19]
• 2009 In January, NFC Forum released Peer-to-Peer standards to transfer contact, URL, initiate Bluetooth, etc.^[20]
• 2010 Samsung Nexus S: First Android NFC phone shown^[21][22]
• 2011 Google I/O "How to NFC" demonstrates NFC to initiate a game and to share a contact, URL, app, video, etc.^[13]
• 2011 NFC support becomes part of the Symbian mobile operating system with the release of Symbian Anna version.^[23]
• 2011 RIM 2011 is the first company for its devices to be certified by MasterCard Worldwide, the functionality of PayPass^[24]
• 2012 March. EAT, a well known UK restaurant chain and Everything Everywhere (Orange Mobile Network Operator) partner on the UK's first nationwide NFC enabled smartposter campaign. (lead by Rene' Batsford, Head of ICT for EAT, also known for deploying the UK's first nationwide contactless payment solution in 2008) A specially created mobile phone app is triggered when the NFC enabled mobile phone comes into contact with the smartposter.^[25]
• 2012 Sony introduces the "Smart Tags", which use NFC technology to change modes and profiles on a Sony smartphone at close range, included in the package of (and "perfectly paired" with) the Sony Xperia P Smartphone released the same year.^[26]

Despite all the hype about the Xperia NFC tags, I am surprised that Sony Mobile has done not much in promoting the technology that it took much to include in a majority of its 2012 NXT range. Did I mention it to you that despite the lack of standardization NFC stands a bigger chance of adoption and whoever gets it right the first time will definitely be the point of reference? Well we all know that is never an innovator but then again they are good at capitalizing of the industry’s dismissed ingenuity such as the portable music player and all touch interface mobile phones as well as the desktop PC.

Talking from the Kenyan point of view and concern about how major players can help steer the adoption of great technologies such the massive us of QR codes by Safaricom in an effort to direct customers to twitter as there customer care platform. They many at times do this with slight doubt and I am very sure not much research is done with regard to this latest technology. I am not afraid to say that market leaders are impatient and not ready to educate consumers. I have been a great fun of proximity marketing from way back and I did a lot of research about the technology and its viability through its evolution up to QR codes and now the era of NFC.

Sony has recently done a silent launched its Sony Xperia S, U and P in partnership with its local distributor Krishna Internal and as you can see they range from top of the range retailing from around Kes 24,000 to 55,000. I personally like the way the brand is faring in the market since Xperia has and will always have a die-hard following and you can that from the activities on its Facebook page despite the lack of content localization and much of the info being copy pasted from the international mother page as compared to other markets such as the US and Australia. Safaricom will as usual be stocking the phones and they definitely will be subsidized but without the most interesting feature which is the NFC tags that are deemed Safaricom to increase the cost of the phones. If I were Sony Mobile Middle East Africa, I will not allow this to happen for this is the only way to push for market penetration with a new technology. I will push for the stocking of Sony mobile phone accessories such as the smart watch, the docks as well as the top of the range earphones which are not being sold in this market. At times doing business in this country calls for sacrifice and even holding the bull by its balls just to have your way. Safaricom’s argument is that people do not know adman thing about NFC like they knew anything about Mpesa when you launched.

If you are an Xperia fan, then you know what you want and most definitely not to treated like a second class citizen and most definitely not like an Apple for you know what you want. I wouldn’t mind if Sony opened fully fledged shop where I can get all that stuff that they have in the rest of the world such as the smart tags rather than relying on local distributors who are up to nothing but protecting their margins with their misinformed assumptions about Kenyan consumer’s coz we can never be defined. Last but never least it will be good to have leaner product line rather than head the Nokia way where phones depreciate much faster than used German cars.

 In the meantime please that if you have a great product then you have to defend it at all cost and should never be deterred by the likes of distributors. There is a lot you can learn about in the Kenyan market from the likes of Samsung and Huawei’s success to the demise of Nokia. It is Sony Mobile’s time globally as HTC struggles, Nokia dies and iPhone loses its appeal. Sony will have to up its production and movie to China to escape the death grip of the Japanese Yen that makes all its product line overly expensive. Oh don’t forget the power of marketing and FYI you already known.