Sony has struggled to get its foot in the door with US smartphone shoppers, but the company is faring significantly better in the UK. Buoyed by a prestigious James Bond license and modest improvements to its Xperia family of hardware, Sony amassed 500,000 sales across the UK during Q3. In doing so, it jumped past HTC — also struggling to gain traction with consumers — to take second place among Android manufacturers in the UK. And while that's good news, Sony will have to get a bit more ambitious if it ever hopes to unseat Samsung from the top spot. Samsung continued its dominant lead in the Android space with 3.2 million units sold. As such, Sony would need to sell six times the total it managed this quarter to even catch up. The move into second place represents progress though, and we wager Sony will do its best to carry that momentum forward into 2013.