Sony

Sony sells a smaller number of phones than almost anyone else in this directory and has stayed in the market anyway, which tells you what the Xperia line is for. It is built for people who want the things the mainstream stopped offering: manual camera controls borrowed from the Alpha camera business, a headphone socket, a microSD slot, and a tall screen aimed at video.

The phones sit inside a much larger company. Sony makes cameras, professional broadcast equipment, audio, and the PlayStation consoles; it runs a film studio and a record label; and it is the largest supplier of the image sensors inside other manufacturers' phones, including some of its competitors'.

The company was founded in May 1946 in Tokyo by Masaru Ibuka and Akio Morita as Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering Corporation. The two had met during the war as engineers.