Horrible standards of communication from middle management and up. You basically can't trust anything they say as far as major developments go, as they prefer to keep people in the dark, one can surmise, to "increase productivity". Lack of clear focus. Even now they can't focus on one platform (Windows Mobile, Android, Symbian) but split forces, focus and team on 2 or 3, with duplicated efforts. Madness or Genius? Take your pick.
Even when they had 20-30+ phone projects going on, Sony Ericsson still had the appearance of a startup company in terms of organizational efficiency, learning from past mistakes and Quality Control. Too many chiefs and not enough indians to execute their vacillating wishes. Probably this could be blamed on having 4 major development centers around the world, each competing for resources and duplicating some efforts, but the failure to succeed in the US, one of the biggest and most competitive markets, where high value and quality at reasonable cost became unattainable. Dont' even mention low cost phones. Not possible for Sony Ericsson, Perhaps high end $700 smartphones, the final frontier, will keep the ship afloat a few (2-3?) more years...
But with the maintained lack of focus of developing for several platforms, using duplicated development which do not communicate with each other, it looks more desperate (read: same old, same old) approach than a serious comeback. I hope I'm wrong because if they had REAL leadership able to forge a ONE MIND team this company and its engineers would probably kick ass. Unfortunately there does not seem to be a culture of openness willing to listen to critique.
