Sony to Say Goodbye to VAIO

Now this is official; it has recently been announced that the Japanese technological giant in the name of Sony Corporation is going to get rid of its famous VAIO division, mostly responsible for computer (laptop) production. The main reason behind this step is simple: VAIO has become unprofitable, and although Sony does not provide official statistics regarding this segment, the company is shutting down this business only because of the mentioned factor. Divestment of Sony’s PC manufacturing division is one of the major steps that the company is undertaking for the overall framework and strategic transformations.

 However, it is know about the new owner of Sony’s PC business. It is the Japanese investment fund, Japan Industrial Partners. Neither of parties have officially announced about the amount of the deal, which should be closed during this March. Yet, according to some independent experts, it will be around $400 – 500M. Just by that time (March 2014), Sony will cease the PC production, and will fire about 5000 of its employees.

 Some competent sources (e.g. Recode.net) claim that Japan Industrial Partners will only sell VAIO in the internal Japanese market, and VAIO’s return to the worldwide market is still in question. At the same time, Sony has already guaranteed to provide corresponding support to the customers using VAIO devices.

It should be mentioned that Sony VAIO was considered as the premium segment of the PC (laptop) market. It’s not a secret that even the legendary Steve Jobs had a pretty flattering attitude towards VAIO. As per Apple Insider, after Jobs’ return to Apple in the mid-90s, he could feel the threat coming from the quality PC machines, and he managed to stop supporting Mac Clone (an application that allowed running Mac OS on the third party platforms).

Nonetheless, in the year 2001, Steve Jobs, who was an outstanding technological “fortune-teller”, has officially proposed a deal with Sony, which considered running Mac OS on all the VAIO machines. Currently it is hard to judge Sony’s reply, but by that time, the Japanese corporation refused to join Mac OS family, since their laptops used to be very popular without any external factors.

Currently, the Japanese corporation mostly relies on manufacturing of high-end Ultra-HD 4K TVs, which is going to be the core of Sony’s business in the nearest future. Sony has announced that investors should not expect the operating profit in the current fiscal year; they promise to provide financial reports by the late March 2015.