Sony’s former unprofitable PC business Vaio is making international comeback

Japan-based consumer-electronics giant Sony Corp.'s former Vaio computer brand is making an international comeback.

Vaio is Sony's former loss-making PC business which the company had sold to a private-equity fund -- Japan Industrial Partners Inc. -- in 2014. The fund stopped the overseas sales of Vaio computers, and chiefly focused on the Japanese market. However, the Vaio computer business in now apparently set to make a comeback in international markets.

According to the information shared by Vaio Corp. CEO Yoshimi Ota during the course of a recent interview, the company will start selling new notebooks in Microsoft's US retail stores from October this year. Ota also said that Vaio plans to move into Brazil with the help of a partnership with Brazilian computer maker Positivo Informatica.

Expressing the hope that the new Vaio brand will be successful in the PC industry, Ota said that the company will follow a modest strategy under which it will -- unlike Sony -- fill high-end niches, instead of pursuing mass-market users. Ota said that Sony failed to turn itself into a leading player in the PC industry because its focus was on market share rather than profitability.

About the approach which Vaio will now follow, Ota said: "At the new Vaio, I ask every project team to make realistic goals and be accountable."