Sony’s year so far has been an interesting one. The company’s 2014 flagship device, the Xperia Z3 was a favorite among the Android faithful. However, when the company released the next-gen device, the Sony Xperia Z3+, consumers seemed a little underwhelmed. Since then, Sony has also pushed through with the release of the Sony Xperia Z5 which is now available to pre-order.
However, their mobile launches have been set against a backdrop in which the company has been noting various downsizing and cost-cutting measures and specifically in there direct-to-consumer sales channels. The U.S. and Canada have both seen announcements coming through detailing that Sony was closing down its online presence. In Canada’s case, the announcement came rather early with the company announcing the closure as far back as January of this year, while the U.S. closures taking place much more recently. To add to the growing list of closures, it now seems that Sony has closed its European store too and rather unceremoniously as there was no prior announcement noted confirming the closure and instead it just seems to have shut its virtual doors.
As such, if you now head over to the official Sony online shop, it more represents a storefront with consumers able to look through the catalog of products on offer without being able to click through and buy. In fact, if you do try and buy, the site will simply list the retail partners that have stock of the item you are trying to buy (similar to how it is shown in the image above). So the stores will highly depend on which Sony product you are planing on buying. The site simply then provides a direct link to their third party retailer site listing. In short, the ability to buy through the Sony site directly seems to be largely finished now. Interestingly though, consumers do still seem to be able to pre-order the Xperia Z5 range of devices and purchase some of the older mobile models through the site (at least in the UK). When clicking through these products, the option to add to cart and checkout does remain. Whether this will also come to a close soon enough remains to be seen. Either way though, the closure of the Sony Store in Europe seems to have occurred.
