From a North American perspective, yes. But Sony is still recognized as a significant smartphone brand in many places around the world. The narrowing of the limelight to just Apple and Samsung is largely a local thing that never took place in most markets. It's more of a peculiarity. It also ties back to our discussions about how sheltered this market is to what are the world's most popular smartphone brands like Xiaomi, Oppo, Vivo, Huawei (who were literally the biggest back in 2018/2019) etc. In North America you may hear about them without realizing how enormous they are, and how much of a last bastion NA is, being the only market that these haven't dominated.
In many markets Sony is a very trusted smartphone brand, and they made some of the most competitive Android phones over the years. Their phones are actually typically more expensive than Apple and Samsung and seen largely as less mainstream but more premium brand offering specialty features that go above and beyond. They are also delivering at least two major Android updates to their flagship phones. Many of the local tech forums over there have a culture of glorifying Sony phones, and there has been almost a snobbish attitude around them. If you browse GSMArena (that has more European folks posting) you will see comments generally disregarding the mainstream brands and favoring Sony. Their phones typically come with very lightly skinned stock Android, fancy 21:9 OLED displays, and Sony's best camera sensors, as well as any other premium bells and whistles they can pack to positively differentiate themselves from regular all-arounders like the iPhones and Galaxy series. The con is they don't have the same scale and ecosystem, being more niche indeed. Nevertheless, they make excellent phones.
