Xiaomi and Micromax's Yu Not Our Competition, Says Sony India

Sony India's smartphone arm will look at consolidating its existing sales and marketing infrastructure but will continue to add more products to its portfolio to expand its customer-base, a top official of the Japanese company's Xperia arm has said.

"We are not looking to expand right now, nor are we opening any new store at the moment. We will consolidate our business at present," Mukesh Srivastava, head of product marketing with Sony's Xperia devices division, told IANS.

Sony, which has again shifted its headquarters, this time from Sweden to Tokyo after a similar move in 2011 out of London, unveiled two mid-range smartphones this week. It faces competition from Xiaomi, Honor, YU that have come out with flagship-like products at low prices.

But Srivastava sought to brush off the competition and even said e-commerce was not an option the company was looking to go into to cut its loses in recent years.

"We are not looking to compete with brands like YU or Xiaomi. Our devices will come in the mid-range and premium range category. We are not even looking at electronic sales. We will focus on securing our distribution channels," he added.

At a mid-term corporate strategy meet in the middle of February this year, Sony revealed that it is going to try and position return on equity as its primary key performance indicator and will set a target for more than 10 percent.

The company also said it will also target a consolidated operating profit of more than JPY 500 billion ($4 billion) for the Sony Group in financial year 2016-17.

Asked about plans to boost sales of its Xperia devices, Srivastava said: "We are focussing on the integration of our Bravia engine, CMOS image sensors, sound engine and the PlayStation Network. We will launch devices that will really please the customers."

Sony in February had also revealed that it will seek to further bolster its competitive edge in the area of CMOS image sensors by investing to increase the production capacity and enhance research and development.

In the games and network services, it wants to expand the user-base for the PlayStation platform and the PlayStation Network.