Sony said its struggling Mobile Communications unit will be folded into a new Electronics Products & Solutions division from 1 April, alongside the Japanese giant’s Imaging Products & Solutions and Home Entertainment & Sound businesses.

The company gave little in the way of detail for the move, which may make it more difficult to assess the performance of its ailing smartphone division: it will report EP&S as a business segment in future, whereas Mobile Communications has so far been reported separately.

Sony’s new Electronics Products & Solutions unit will come under the leadership of Shigeki Ishizuka, who was already the officer responsible for the mobile unit in addition to holding senior positions in the imaging business.

Underperforming
Reports this week noted that despite its strong digital imaging credentials, Sony’s smartphones have failed to impress when compared with rivals. Recently released benchmarking credentials from DxOMark for Sony’s Xperia XZ3, which was announced in 2018, scored the imaging performance below that of Samsung’s four year-old Galaxy S6.

Sony’s latest flagship, Xperia 1, is yet to be benchmarked, but does bring a number of technologies from elsewhere in the Sony portfolio.

In a Trusted Reviews interview, Adam Marsh, senior manager of global marketing for the vendor, noted a previous restructure had already gone some way to enable this technology sharing by removing some of the barriers between departments.

“Even though we’re one company, there are still sometimes barriers that Alpha [high-end imaging] doesn’t want to give Mobile certain things, because all of a sudden you have the same as what a £3,000 camera’s got. Now that barrier’s gone a little bit,” the executive said.

With Sony Mobile Communications now set to form part of the same unit as Imaging Products & Solutions and Home Entertainment & Sound, with the same ultimate management, it is possible that barriers will come down even more, enabling Sony to better leverage technology from its other units to bolster its smartphone proposition.

Separately, IP management company Anaqua said it had been selected by Sony to manage the Sony Mobile Communications patent and trademark portfolios.