Rumors about the sales of PC sector by Sony are crowding internet in the last days. The brand owned by Japanese Company, the well known Vaio, is one of the most respected and appreciated in the World but recently it has been afflicted by the general weakness of PC Market.
As already analysed, the PC market is in transformation more than in decline and this transformation means that more of the common tasks done on a PC (e-mail, browsing, …) are now done in the device part of Mobile sectors (tablets, phablets and also smartphones). Sony is also present in Mobile Market with its brand Xperia that, contrary to PCs sector, is growing in the last time after buying the remaining part of what was Sony-Ericsson.
Market trends from Gartners Data elaboration
Vaio series already presented some tablet (or tablet-like) alternatives as Sony Vaio Duo, that really are well done devices, but it also has some tablet and phablets from Xperia brand.
Up to now, the approach that seems taken by Sony is to focusing the Xperia brand on Android OS and the Vaio on Windows OS. This approach in principle could be good also in case of announce of Windows Phone Smartphones, as some rumors. But is it worth having two main brands, meaning marketing, R&D effort,…? Probably not, especially when you can still sell Vaio brand for about 500 Million USD. Of course this will mean to refocus Xperia brand also on Windows Phone, but this is more feasible than having two brands partially overlapped.
Is it worth for Lenovo buying Sony Vaio? At a first glance, I would say no. Lenovo already have a well known brand in laptop business sector (probably the most known), the famous ThinkPad (formerly IBM) and recently it bought also the IBM server sector. The consumer PCs is taken with IdeaPad and Yoga series and even if not, at least in Europe, known as Vaio, it has a good success in the last year. Of course Vaio brand could add value and market share to Lenovo, but typically in such acquisition 1+1 < 2, so I expect that Lenovo simply buy the brand for avoiding a competitor and use the brand itself for some kind of rebranding of products without spend too much in R&D.
Anyway we’ll see soon, and in the meantime Sony shares this morning saw a god +4.58% also for such rumors.
Update: Reuters reports: ” Sony Corp is in talks with investment fund Japan Industrial Partners to sell its loss-making Vaio personal computer division, a source familiar with the matter said on Wednesday.
A new company would be set up by Japan Industrial Partners to take over the Vaio brand’s operations in Japan, according to the plan under consideration, the source said. Financial details and stakeholdings in the new entity were still being discussed.”
Sony shares, 5th Feb 2014
HTGadgets 