Sony Mobile Evangelist

For Sony, in India,the first and faintest glimmers of a turnaround in the mobile space have begun to appear. Over the last six months, in which it had five launches, Sony Mobile claims things are changing for the better. According to industry folk in the know, in the January to April 2012 period, it led certain segments within the Android based smartphone universe with a share of 50 per cent albeit in a narrow price bracket of Rs 15,000-20,000.

P Balaji, MD, Sony Mobile, is pleased with the results but knows there is still a long way to go. "When we started the journey a year back, there were a number of areas to be fixed — distribution,customer pull, operator engagement, end-to-end customer management, a strongleadership and most important the product," he says.

Sony hired new heads for sales, operator alliances and product, content and services. Retailers were won back by providing trained staff for product demonstrations, setting up kiosks and even giving the stores live mobile phones. "It was important that distributors saw us as a dependable company," says Balaji. Sony mobile tied up with operators like Airtel, Aircel, Tata Docomo and Reliance to offer exclusive data plans for corporate customers. Offers comprised money-backpacks, free mobile TV and access to Sony's cloud service called 'Box', with 50GB of free file sharing and storage

Via: ET