What Happens to Sony's PC Business Now?
Sony announces plans to sell PC line to Japanese investment firm JIP Inc.
Sony has confirmed plans to sell off its PC business to Japan Industrial Partners or JIP Inc. So what does this mean for the Vaio line of computers?
The short answer is not a whole lot in the extreme short term. Sony said today that it will cease in the planning, design, and development of PC products, which includes the Vaio-branded machines. However, the company has a spring 2014 lineup that it plans to launch worldwide, so you will still see Vaio laptops on shelves this year. And, even then, the Vaio spirit will live on at a new company.
Sony said today that as many as 300 employees are expected to be hired by the new JIP-established company. Though Sony doesn't specifically say which departments these employees are coming from, the company did say that they are involved in PC operations including planning, design, development, manufacturing and sales. It's entirely possible that the same people responsible for the design and manufacture of today's Vaios will still be doing the same work six months from now, or a year from now, just in a different office. An office that is more focused on the success of these machines because it's not worrying about the PS4 or the Xperia line of mobile devices.
There was a time when Sony's Vaio computers were some of the hottest laptops around, and the brand still has fans. To that end, Sony plans to provide support for and aftercare services for customers even after it withdraws from the PC market. As an aside, if you've had your eye on a Vaio for a while, now might be the time to get one. One of the only details we do know for certain about the future of Sony's PC business is that JIP will focus on the Japanese market, at least at first. Sony said that JIP will initially concentrate on console and corporate PC sales in Japan and evaluate possible expansion down the road. So once the current generation of Vaio computers passes its sell by date, you won't see anymore for a while.
The real question is how long Sony plans to provide support for current and new users. We've asked the company if it has some kind of cut off in place in terms of date of purchase, or if it will be only offering support for certain models, but have yet to hear back. We'll keep you posted!
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Jane McEntegart is a writer, editor, and marketing communications professional with 17 years of experience in the technology industry. She has written about a wide range of technology topics, including smartphones, tablets, and game consoles. Her articles have been published in Tom's Guide, Tom's Hardware, MobileSyrup, and Edge Up.
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red77star They just quit to have any business with Windows 8 and future flavor of Windows following same Metro concept. Reason? Poor sale...people don't want it. We will see more OEM businesses doing same. I predicted this during Windows 8 beta stage.Reply -
Blazer1985 Actually this has almost nothing to do with windows 8 I think (they still sold pc with windows 7 inside). The vaio line was always aimed at the professionals but they made some poor design decisions. A big chunk of customers jumped on the macbook train (a bad choice if you are after multimedia production imho). Besides their nice Z series the top of the F line weighted almost like an alienware while it performed notably slower. Their S line was ALMOST GOOD for everything but REALLY GOOD for nothing. :-(Reply -
ananke Nope, SONY is consolidating their high profit businesses. Making PC and TV and in general consumer electronics is not high profit anymore - it became China made commodity, and we are seeing large players exiting towards services - HP, Dell, Sony, etc. SONY is not abandoning just the PC, they will exit the TV business as well. The consumer electronics will be predominantly Chinese and for some time Korean business.SONY is doing great with medical, financial services, super high tech sub-assemblies, image sensors, optics, movie and music production. They will just focus on that, and probably mobile - tablets and phones, in order to promote their high profit generated services.Reply -
Blazer1985 The thing that I'm missing the most is the fantastic fhd matte display I had on my old vaio. In this time of "retina" displays everyone seems to forget about color accuracy, dinamic range and awfully reflecting surfaces.Reply -
red77star Everything has to do with Windows 8. People jumped on the MacBook train because of Windows 8. Shit is absolutely useless on anything but Phone and Tablet and yet Tablet is crippled there with useless Desktop interface. MS mixed apples and oranges...I would fire whole Windows design team long ago, every one of them. What are they doing? They are adding more useless options to Windows 8.1.1 to close a gap between two different things in such unnatural way that it makes me puke.Reply -
ikaz Everything doesn' t have to do with windows 8 that bit much really the most vocal people who don't like win8 are probably businesses (who wants to retrain a staff on the UI) and tech savy people. Busines won't "turn" to macs unless they are already in house since they not only cost more but they would have to buy new applications and/or train people on the Mac which defeats the purpose of moving. Tech savy people well just downgrade to windows 7. The biggest issue with windows 8 is just UI not the underlining OS. It basically windows 7+ with an ugly UI. It would also most be like taking a lambo remove all the leather replace it with puke green cloth interior, and put a ford fesia shell on it (ok sure there are aero dymanic issues you get the point). Under all crap you still have a supercar just no one would want to be seen with it.Reply