http://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/IR/financial/fr/index.html
Looking to sell off the PC business, will restructure the TV/Display side, letting go of about 5,000 jobs.
I’m bummed to hear this, since Sony had some of the best non-Mac PC designs. However, since their stuff was always priced way beyond what reason would support, I can’t say I’m surprised they’re struggling.
For the last 10 years, they have had some overpriced lustworthy Vaio models from Japan. You can still see some on Dynamism.com but I suspect that kind of import site is winding down too.
Checking Dynamism now, there’s only 2 Panasonic models.
My gf’ll be sad to hear this; she’s been a big fan of Vaios as the only thing to look as cool (well, almost) as the Macs all her very rich friends in grad school use. Ah well, another one bites the dust. . .
Just too expensive. VAIOs had zero penetration in the business space, and most consumers that were willing to spend money wanted Apple.
Yeah, that was exactly their problem. People willing to spend $1000+ on a laptop mostly buy Apple products, and everyone else is buying the $400 laptops at Walmart with no margin on them. There was no money in a race to the bottom and MS shitting the bed with Windows 8 just made the high end market untenable.
The Vaio SZ was pretty awesome.
Sony put a lot of effort into its Vaio Duo touchscreen hybrids designed for Windows 8. I guess the unwillingness of customers to use Windows 8 in general and Metro mode in particular can’t have helped Vaio’s profits recently.
They’re also closing their eReader business for good.
They’re transferring people’s accounts, balance and their libraries, though, to Kobo and they’re doing firmware for the TRS-model ereaders which will connect to the Kobo store.
Far better than abandoning people and I applaud them for it.
The Vaio’s…are nice but have always been overpriced. Oh well.
You say Vaio, I say goodbye.
You’re letting me down, tech news headline writers.
I’ve been lusting after a Duo 13 but I’m not sure that Sony leaving the market is the way to get me to buy. On the other hand maybe I can find a deal now.
Pretty much this. I’ve always been interested in the look and performance, but the price has always been crazy on them.
What’s more, is that I have no idea what Vaio even means (Google tells me it means “Video Audio Integrated Operation” … which is silly).
Wow… I wasn’t even aware they made PCs, I thought they were only active in the laptop/notebook market!
(though it seems that that differentiation is losing meaning these days)
Well yes, that’s what “PC” means these days. Few people buy desktops anymore, and I don’t think Sony bothered to make any.
Sony deserve some serious kudos for that. It would be easy to just abandon the platform and customer base, which is what many other providers would do.
That is the kind of stuff that ends up instilling customer loyalty but just does not get talked about and, of course, is terribly difficult to quantify.
Yea - it does fit the Sony eReader team though*, and I hope they’re employed elsewhere in Sony and don’t lose their jobs.
(*For example, when they moved from BBeB to EPub books in their store, their original PRS-500 readers (then two generations of readers old) couldn’t handle the new firmware to handle reading ePub as a download, so they offered everyone with a PRS-500 the opportunity to mail them back to Sony (at their expense, inside the US, it was never officially sold outside the US), who’d put a bigger flash chip in, reflash with the new firmware and mail them back… or a $50/75 trade-in)
Yeah its great of Sony to do what they’re doing with Kobo. Any other company would have just said “download your books now - or else!”
Wow! I had no idea Sony had done that with their PRS-500s. I remember throwing mine away shortly after that transition, since it wasn’t of a whole hell of a lot of use to me at that point. I should have known better.
Damn! I kinda really like the look of those early desktop PCs.
I seem to recall looking at one way back in the day, and liking the look of it a lot, but then realizing that even after spending all that money, it wouldn’t game for shit.