During its latest financial results presentation, Sony chief financial officer Lin Tao insisted that Xperia remains “a very important business for us.”

Speaking to CNET Japan, he claimed Sony wants to “continue to value” its smartphone operations, even though the brand has been slowly vanishing from store shelves.

Tao said that Sony had “cultivated communication technology for a long time,” and while he maintained that smartphones are still part of that, he also noted that such tech is now being used in areas outside mobile devices. That shift in language suggests Xperia may already be morphing into more of a parts donor for other Sony divisions.

Xperia’s market share is microscopic. Sony has retreated from the US market, lost significant ground in Japan, and earlier this year stopped manufacturing the devices. The dark satanic rumour mill manufactured a hell on earth yarn claiming the outfit was about to pullback in Europe, leaving only a niche fanbase and sporadic product launches to hold up the brand.

Sony has repeatedly claimed it is committed to Xperia, but every public statement seems more like a holding pattern than a strategy. New models are announced with limited availability, minimal marketing and pricing that puts them in direct competition with better-known, more widely supported brands.

The company might still be using Xperia’s internals or imaging tech in other parts of its consumer electronics lineup, particularly in cameras or gaming. But as a standalone smartphone brand, Xperia looks increasingly like a relic Sony does not know how to bury without admitting defeat.