Sony’s mobile division has posted its Q1 2017 earnings and, while the numbers aren’t necessarily spectacular, they aren’t looking overly negative for the year so far either. The results, which were reported on today and range for the three months leading up to June 30, show that around 3.4 million Sony-branded Android smartphones for the quarter. That’s may be up only 10 percent year-over-year, but Sony has a lot of technology projects going on and isn’t the biggest smartphone maker on the market by any means.
In general, the company’s operating profits and overall income also saw gains. Breaking that down, Sony Mobile saw almost a 300 percent increase in operating profits – up to 158 billion yen or just under $1.4 billion USD. For year-over-year revenue, it also saw a 15 percent improvement, landing at 1,858 billion yen or around $16.8 billion USD. It isn’t all good news, however, since the company actually reported a drop of about 3 percent in mobile revenues. Moreover, the operating profits posted by the company for the quarter itself ended up at around 3.6 million yen – only around $32,593 USD. Sony appears to attribute the decrease to how it shuffled its mobile devices over the past year. Mid-range devices outstripped the sales performance of higher end devices released across that timeframe. That makes sense, considering the increase in sales even though mobile revenue is down. According to Sony, the uptick in income was likely because of lower operating costs, as well as decreases in its research and development sectors.
For the time being, the position of Sony’s mobile division in the smartphone arena looks to be stable. Although any of that could present a problem for the company, in the short term, it could also end up helping with Sony’s device sale totals in the long run. That’s because most Android users around the world are shopping in either the low or mid-range device categories, as opposed to the high-end categories. The company has spent a good amount of time increasing brand loyalty and building several excellent devices over the past several years. With announcements regarding a few more mid-rangers expected just around the corner, Sony could potentially cement itself even further in that space.
