Sony plans to sell Vaio PC business

Sony is in talks with the Japanese investment fund Japan Industrial Partners (a joint venture between Bain & Co. and Mizuho Securities Co) to sell its unprofitable computer manufacturing division Vaio. This is indicated by the sources of The Wall Street Journal.

For the past few years, Sony has massively cut jobs and shut down factories to fight losses. But the TV business and the PC manufacturing business are dragging the company down and annoying investors to get rid of unprofitable assets.

According to the plan currently under consideration, Japan Industrial Partners will create a new company to consolidate Vaio's business in Japan. Details on the price and size of the purchased package are still being discussed. In addition, Sony is thinking about curtailing business in overseas PC markets.
As the Nikkei newspaper reported, the Vaio division will be sold for 50 billion yen ($ 493 million) and Sony will only have a small share in the new company.
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According to WSJ analysts, this year the loss from Sony’s PC business will be 30-40 billion yen (at least $ 300 million). As expected, this week, Sony will announce weak financial results for the III quarter of last year. Most likely, the company will not be able to achieve a forecast profit of 30 billion yen by March.

History reference

The Vaio brand was created in 1996 and became the face of Sony due to its bright and modern design. But due to the growing popularity of tablets and smartphones, sales of personal computers are declining. PC shipments worldwide may be reduced by 7% to 278 million units in 2014 compared to last year, according to a Gartner study.

After the news about the sale of Vaio, Sony shares went up by almost 8%. By the close of the Tokyo Stock Exchange, quotations grew by 4.58% to 1600 Japanese yen.

Earlier it was reported that Sony could set up a joint venture for the production of PCs with Lenovo. Later, Sony disowned a possible alliance with a Chinese vendor, but admitted that it was considering various options for restructuring its Vaio brand. Like LG, Sony intends to focus on the production of tablets and smartphones.

Dissenting opinion of the director of the store Dns-shop.ru

“In our stores, Sony laptops and televisions are inadequate in demand, due to the average“ stuffing ”and a high price relative to competitors. Why pay for the brand when you can get a similar laptop from DNS and Lenovo at times cheaper. And in the segment of TV and plasma from LG and Samsung. It is difficult for the consumer to explain that he should give more for the same thing.

But there are also positive aspects of Sony technology. Our warranty center practically does not fix warranty cases of customer treatment with Sony equipment. And this indicates a decent quality. "

WCJ source