Sony has chimed in on rumors that they are planning to let go of their Vaio PC business, indicating that they are looking at options, but have nothing to announce at this time.
Apparently, two separate rumors have come up in relation to this. The first one comes from Japanese daily Nikkei, and more recently Reuters.
Nikkei alleges that they are making plans with an investment group called Japan Industrial Partners to form a new company with the Vaio brand, with Sony having minor ownership. This new company would deal with after sales service as well as future manufacture of devices. If it pushes through, it is estimated to be worth between $ 391 – 489 million.
Reuters’ report is more interesting, stating that no less than Lenovo, currently the biggest manufacturer of PCs by volume, is in talks with Sony for Vaio. This comes not too long after Lenovo is finalizing their purchases of Motorola Mobility from Google and IBM’s x86 server business.
The news has caused Sony’s stocks to rally, and Lenovo’s to sink, but Sony has come out with statements downplaying the rumors. Sony has outright denied rumors of Lenovo talks. Regarding Japan Industrial Partners, Sony neither confirmed nor denied. You can read their full statement below.
Press reports on February 4-5, 2014 stated that Sony Corporation ("Sony") is discussing with Japan Industrial Partners Inc. (JIP) to establish a new company for Sony's PC business in Japan. Sony has made no announcement in this regard. As Sony has announced previously, Sony continues to address various options for the PC business, but Sony has no further comments.
If Sony does let go of their PC business, not only could it help them focus on their other businesses, but it would eliminate the possibly crippling conflict of interest of working with Microsoft. Sony still has their tablets and smartphones, and they can move things around so that Playstation could work more closely with these and their other products, raising the stakes against their frenemy Microsoft. It’s all up in the air for now, but we’ll keep you up to date as news comes out.
