In October 2011, Sony announced that they will be purchasing Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson’s 50 percent stake, thus making it an entirely Sony owned company. The brand Sony Ericcson officially became Sony Mobile Communications, and all the devices launched since then only had Sony’s name.

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Two years ago, in 2013, when Sony was still getting profits through smartphone business, they announced a new flagship series with the launch of Xperia Z. Now it’s 2015 and Sony has already announced the fifth phone of the premium Z series.

(Also Read: Sony Xperia Z4 launched in Japan)

Xperia Z was one of the first 1080p phones from tier 1 brands, and also was waterproof, a unique feature at that time. The Z4 is still a 1080p phone, when quite a few competitors have moved on to QHD and water resistance is no longer a USP in smartphone category.

Announced in January 2013, the Xperia Z had a few weeks advantage given that rivals HTC and Samsung announced their flagship in February and March respectively. Even with that slight advantage, the Xperia Z was not as successful as Galaxy S4 or HTC One, but that was more because of the other two smartphones being better than Sony’s offering.

Now it’s April already, HTC and Samsung have announced their flagships on March 1, and Sony still hasn’t announced the Z4 internationally, not even a date has been confirmed for the launch.

There have been numerous reports about Sony suffering losses in the mobile business. Last year there were reports of Sony planning to do away with TV and smartphone businesses. And now, at a time when they should be looking at ways to regain profits, look at what Sony has done.

Maybe adding a QHD display won’t be as important. But almost 7 weeks after other brands launched their respective flagship smartphones, Sony hasn’t yet launched the Z4 for international market. And they are coming up with a phone that is almost the same as its predecessor, at least on paper. In fact the two phones are so similar that the talking points of Z4 are the Snapdragon processor, the higher ISO setting and a “cooking mode” which supposedly captures “freshness and three-dimensional sense of cuisine”. Seriously? Is that even a feature? Are they really serious about trying to return its smartphone division to profit?

But then, to be highly optimistic, let’s hope that the international variant will be a different model with better specs. Maybe that’s why Sony is delaying the launch. They may come up with something that will be on par with the current flagships, or something better. But as mentioned earlier, you should be very optimistic to think so.

(Also Read : Top 10 features of Samsung Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge)

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By Ashish Mukundan

Ashish Mukundan is a tech enthusiast and sports lover. Currently an Engineering student in Mumbai, he wishes to share his knowledge through brief articles and reviews relating to tech.

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