page_title: Sony Mobile
section_title: 2011 to 2020
hierarchical_section_title: Sony Mobile / History / 2011 to 2020
caption_attribution_description: Sony Xperia Z2
context_page_description: Sony Mobile Communications Inc. is a multinational telecommunications company founded on October 1, 2001 as a joint venture between Sony and Ericsson, headquartered in Tokyo, Japan and wholly owned by Sony. It was originally incorporated as Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications, and headquartered in London, England, until Sony acquired Ericsson's share in the venture on February 16, 2012.
  On March 26, 2020, Sony announced that it will establish an intermediate holding company called Sony Electronics Corporation that will incorporate the three businesses that comprise its Electronics Products & Solutions segment effective April 1, 2020.
  Sony Mobile has research and development facilities in Lund, Sweden; Beijing, China; Tokyo, Japan; and San Francisco, United States. At its peak in 2007, Sony Ericsson, Sony Mobile's predecessor, held a 9 percent global mobile phone market share making it the fourth largest vendor at the time. In 2017, Sony Mobile held less than 1% global market share but 4.8% in Europe and 16.3% in Japan.
context_section_description: On October 27, 2011, Sony announced that it would acquire Ericsson's stake in Sony Ericsson for €1.05 billion ($1.47 billion), making the mobile handset business a wholly owned subsidiary of Sony. The transaction's completion was expected to occur in January 2012. At their keynote at the 2012 Consumer Electronics Show, Sony's Kaz Hirai announced that Sony Ericsson would be known simply as Sony Mobile Communications pending completion of the transaction. On January 26, 2012, the European Union approved the buyout.  On February 16, 2012, Sony announced it had completed the full acquisition of Sony Ericsson. On January 7, 2013, Sony Mobile completed moving its headquarters from Lund, Sweden to Tokyo, Japan in order to fully integrate with its parent company. The first Sony-only mobile was the Sony Xperia S at the 2012 Consumer Electronics Show. Sony Mobile Communications decided to phase out all the feature (non-smart) phones by September 2012 and focus completely on the smartphones segment.
  Sony Mobile was the fourth-largest smartphone manufacturer by market share in the fourth quarter of 2012 with 9.8 million units shipped.
  On July 2, 2012, Sony announced it was buying Gaikai, a cloud service to support its expansion into the cloud gaming realm. Sony paid a reported $380 million to acquire Gaikai.  The Sony Ericsson Liquid Energy Logo, which was the hallmark logo used on Sony Mobile products up until the 2012 series of phones, was replaced with a new power button designed as the new signature hallmark to easily identify a Sony phone and this debuted with the 2013 series of Xperia mobile phones. The last phones to feature the Liquid Energy logo were the Sony Xperia T and Sony Xperia TX, and the first phones without featuring it were the Sony Xperia J and Sony Xperia V. Both were unveiled at the IFA 2012. At the 2013 Consumer Electronics Show the Sony Xperia Z and Sony Xperia ZL were announced, followed by the Sony Xperia Z1, unveiled during a press conference in IFA 2013, the Sony Xperia Z2 during the 2014 Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, and the Sony Xperia Z3 in IFA 2014.
  On October 30, 2014, Sony announced that Senior Vice President of Corporate Planning, Finance and New Business Creation Department Hiroki Totoki will replace Kunimasa Suzuki as President and CEO of Sony Mobile Communications with effect from November 16, 2014. Suzuki subsequently became the Group Executive of Sony Corporation after his departure from Sony Mobile Communications.
  In the last quarter of 2015, Sony Mobile had the highest per-handset-profit and average selling price of all major Android handset manufacturers. However, in terms of market share, Sony Mobile dropped out of the top 10 smartphone vendors globally for the first time in the first quarter of the year.
  Sony Mobile has been the only major smartphone OEM that has given support to developing communities of smaller, hacker-focused mobile operating systems during this time. In 2013 Sony released an experimental Firefox OS ROM for the Sony Xperia E device. In 2017 Sony got Sailfish OS into its Open Devices program. As a result, the Sailfish software has been officially ported to many Xperia devices.
  As of Q2 2018, Sony Mobile's smartphone market share in Japan was 12.5%, behind Apple and Sharp.
  On March 26, 2020 Sony announced that it will establish an intermediate holding company "Sony Electronics Corporation" effective April 1, 2020. Sony Electronics Corporation will incorporate the three businesses that comprise its Electronics Products & Solutions ("EP&S") segment (Imaging Products & Solutions, Home Entertainment & Sound, and Mobile Communications) and related global sales and marketing, manufacturing, logistics, procurement and engineering platforms.
caption: Sony Xperia Z2, released in 2014, is Sony Mobile's former flagship device
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