Will Sony Be Late To The Quad-Core Smartphone Party?

While speaking to CNET Asia, Stephen Sneeden, Product Marketing Manager for Sony Mobile, indicated his company may not release quad-core smartphones until early in 2013. While many mobile handset manufacturers have announced and shown off their latest quad-core handsets this week at Mobile World Congress, it appears Sony is holding off for better performance.

Sneeden did qualify his remarks, saying they are only his assumption and that Sony will make official announcements when it is ready to do so. Sneeden also indicated that Sony is waiting to join the quad-core movement until the performance matches battery efficiency. In the meantime, Sneeden indicates "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."

This isn't the first time Sony Mobile has held off in offering the latest technologies in smartphones. While dual-core smartphones have been available for nearly a year, Sony's dual-core Xperia S was announced this year. At Mobile World Congress this year, Sony announced two new dual-core Xperia smartphones that will run Android 2.3 Gingerbread at launch.