Report: Sony won't build any more flagship Xperia phones

Phone Arena

2 days ago

Sony had been building its Xperia flagship handsets in three manufacturing facilities. Two of these plants are located in Thailand and one is in China. According to Sony's manufacturing websites, all three of these factories no longer list smartphones among the devices that are built at these locations. The first Xperia flagship to be assembled by a third party is the new Xperia 1 VII. We just reviewed the Xperia 1 VII and gave it a score of 7.2 out of a possible 10.
For the second consecutive year, Sony has decided not to ship its flagship smartphone to the U.S. Sony's inability to snag a deal with any U.S. carrier has been one of the big reasons why the Xperia line didn't catch on in the States leading Sony to stop shipping its phones to the third-largest smartphone market in the world. One thing for sure is that having a third-party build the Xperia 1 VII won't result in a lower price for the phone. The price tag on the device reads £1,399 for the model with 256GB of storage. This is the same starting price for last year's base model which also was equipped with 256GB of storage. The global version of the Xperia 1 XI is available via Amazon. This is a GSM phone which means it won't work on Verizon. With T-Mobile, the phone does support key 5G bands used by T-Mobile including the important n41 2.5GHz band. The latter delivers the carrier's faster 5G Ultra Capacity service. It also supports the n71 band delivering the slower nationwide 5G over 600MHz low-band spectrum. If you are a T-Mobile subscriber and must have the Xperia 1 VI, purchase the XQ-EC64 model. The latter works with 7 out of 12 T-Mobile bands including sub-6GHz and mmWave.
The Sony 1 VII is manufactured by a third-party firm according to a new report. | Image credit-PhoneArena As for AT&T, the network support isn't as strong as it for T-Mobile . The XQ-EC72 model of the Xperia 1 VI for Asian Pacific markets supports 10 out of AT&T 's 17 frequency bands including nationwide 5G over 850MHz and mid-band 5G using C-band frequencies.
The crazy thing about Sony's inability to get traction for its Xperia smartphones is that Sony is a consumer electronics powerhouse. Before the popular PlayStation video game platform, Sony was known for huge hits such as the Walkman. This was a portable device for playing music that included earphones and a cassette player. Later versions featured a CD player.
Sony is also a major supplier in the smartphone industry. The company supplies phone manufacturers with the best-selling line of image sensors for smartphone cameras. As of Q4 of last year, Sony had a 55% share of this business and the company expects to take 60% of the market this year.