Sony offered a cautious assessment of its business supplying sensors for third-party smartphones in its fiscal Q1 results report, noting a lack of momentum in the Chinese market.

In its overview of the smartphone market and performance of its mobile sensor business, the consumer tech heavyweight said it was concerned about the sector in China following well-documented issues of a major local vendor.

Although not naming the troubled company in question, Sony added in its assessment the high-end smartphone market in China was being hampered due to “no big hit products like those that had been sold in 2019 and 2020” from the vendor.

Sony, however, said it had managed to offset its own year-on-year decrease in shipments to the company and had increased segment revenue compared with fiscal Q1 2020. This was due to an increase of sales to other vendors and supply of similar components to digital camera companies.

Its Imaging and Sensing Solutions Segment recorded revenue of JPY218 billion ($2 billion) compared with JPY206 billion in Q1 2020.

Xperia
In its financial statements and associated results call Sony made little comment on its own smartphone business, which is set to release its latest batch of handsets later in the current quarter.

In its fiscal Q1 (the quarter to end-June) Sony’s Mobile Communications business shifted units worth JPY81.4 billion compared with JPY94.2 billion in the equivalent quarter of 2020. The division bundles in its Xperia smartphone sales with “internet-related service businesses”. It was the only one of its consumer hardware-centric units to report a year-on-year decline.

Across the whole of Sony’s varied business net profit increased 9 per cent to JPY212 billion on revenue of JPY2.3 trillion, up 15 per cent.