“We ended the fourth quarter of last year with a share of 5.4% of the smartphone market. Now that we’ve launched the first full HD phone we want to double market share, including the mass market models to come,” said Larisa Zota, key account manager for Xperia mobile products.
The local smartphone market rose from 600,000 to about one million units last year, according to the estimates of the companies in this business and may go up by 50% towards 1.5 million units in 2013.
“Sony wants a two-digit market share on the smartphone and tablet market. Clients have just started seeing the smartphones in stores. The tablet segment in Romania is a niche business, at least when it comes to the premium segment where two or three competitors are making most of the sales (…),” Zota said.
Sony officials said they aimed for one of the top spots on the market dominated by Samsung and Apple.
Sony Xperia Z has been officially launched in Romania and is available from Orange and Vodafone.
“Xperia Z smartphone will become available from the three major cell phone operators in a few days and then from retailers in the next few weeks. We are not pursuing specific quantities but we want to consolidate our position on the premium segment and expand horizontally from phones, tablets and TV sets,” said Lucian Radulescu, Sony country manager for Romania.
Sony has also launched the new range of Triluminos TV sets and the new UHD 4K TVs (which have twice the resolution of the current Full HD TVs), the Ultra HD 55X9005 with Magnetic Fluid Speakers and the same model in the 65” version.
“The new 4K TVs will become available in June or July. The Triluminos technology will be on the market at the end of April, sometime in the next four or five weeks,” Lucian Radulescu said.
Sony introduced the 4K 84” TV in Romania in March, which costs EUR26,000. It plans to also release the 65” 4K TV at less than EUR10,000, about EUR7,000 to EUR8,000 and the 55% version for about EUR5,000, said Lucian Radulescu. He added the sales target was several hundred units considering the difficult market and the stagnating real estate sector, as buying such a TV is also influenced by moving a new home.
“I set a personal target of 10 units for the 84” TV. Selling the first one is the hardest, and then the word of mouth will do the rest (…),” Radulescu said.
Sony saw higher sales of mainly TV with a screen size of more than 40 inches last year. Its sales of headphones, cameras, tablets and Sony Vaio laptops, also went up. Sales of video cameras, where it accounts for 60% or 70% of the market, fell, but the entire market of such products has been dwindling by over 10% each year, Sony Romania’s boss said.
The large screen TVs and Triluminos TVs, with 46” and 55” screen sizes mainly will see the highest growth this year. “We also expect the market to grow by 30% to 50% on this segment; at Sony we plan to triple sales. We want to progress from 25% market share to over 50% of the segment,” Lucian Radulescu said.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)