Sony: Quad-Core Phone Unlikely in 2012

One of the biggest themes to come out of the Mobile World Congress this year has been quad-core smartphones. HTC has announced one. LG as well. And there have been a few smaller players like Fujitsu and Huawei who unveiled quad-core smartphones as well. Noticeably absent is Sony, famous for its Xperia line of phones, and it appears that that absence will drag on until 2013.

According to comments made to CNET Asia by Stephen Sneeden, Product Marketing Manager for Sony Mobile, Sony will not be releasing a quad-core smartphone in 2012 and instead will be looking to 2013.

Sneeden says that this is just his assumption and that plans could at some point change at some point during the course of the year.

His comments:

We’re going to join quad-core when we feel that the performance matches the battery efficiency. Because right now we don’t feel that is there. What we are going to be doing in the second-half of the year is moving to the Cortex A15 architecture, which we feel outperforms the current quad-core architecture.

You’ll see in 2013, as we’re evaluating the quad-core performance where it makes sense, where you’re not suffering in quality and the performance truly is there, and there really is something that demanding applications need. That’s when we make the right move to quad-core.

Sony was late to getting a dual-core device to market as well.

Its first dual-core smartphone, the Sony Xperia S, launched back at CES 2012.

Dual-core smartphones have been on sale since the early part of 2011.

Instead of announcing a quad-core smartphone at MWC, the company unveiled two new dual-core smartphones in the Sony Xperia P and the Sony Xperia U.

So, if Sneeden is dead on with his assumption and we’re going to assume that he is based on the company’s track record, those hoping for a quad-core Xperia device have a long wait ahead of them.