Sony wants to position smartphones as Alpha camera accessories

As you may know, Sony’s smartphone Xperia business has been struggling. If you’re curious about their next move, take a look at this newly leaked image shared by Reddit user Ed-Banger. He writes:

Smartphones as Alpha accessories: …the question is: will they offer us a successor of the first PRO that is (at least with an adjusted price tag) also interesting for normal Xperia users or will the bring us more devices like the PDT-FP1 which are not really usable for anything else than that special purpose. Anyway, it looks like they’re moving the usage of smartphones as accessory for cameras away from the regular models (no more External Monitor app) to specialized devices. I’m hoping that these devices resemble regular smartphones.
On ODM-rumours from highly unreliable sources: We know that the 1 VII is made in China but we don’t know for sure whether it’s made in-house by Sony (Sony has its own factories in China) or by a third party manufacturer. Not that it makes much of a difference anyway but Sony underlines that manufacturing of TVs and smartphones will be conducted by an optimized mix of in-house and outsourced production.
The transformation will be completed by FY2026 (Sony’s fiscal year 2026 starts in April 2026)

Really don’t know if this strategy will work out for Sony…