Sony sold VAIO earlier this year, removing the acclaimed laptop brand from the Japanese company’s portfolio after three decades of work.
New owners Japan Industrial Partners (JIP) are looking to expand the brand from just laptops, apparently readying up an Android smartphone for the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in January.
Not much is known about the new Android smartphone, it will reportedly feature a 5-inch display, will run the latest version of Android and will offer a new service for managing email, alongside making phone and video calls.
JIP might be looking to focus on the mid-range market, popular in China and Japan. Xiaomi, ZTE and Lenovo have all managed to capture this market, with cheap devices running high-end specifications.
The move is part of a restructuring effort by JIP to focus on smartphones and HDTVs, moving away from laptops. The VAIO brand should serve as strong leverage in South-East Asia, when it comes to selling the devices.
VAIO has always been a well respected brand, even if sales started to falter in the past few years. Sony has been restructuring itself, forcing it to sell various divisions.
Hopefully, JIP has learned from the failures of VAIO in the past, and will make sure to price devices accordingly. The VAIO brand was competing with Apple’s MacBook when it came to price, but Sony did not have the dedicated fan base Apple has acquired.
If JIP wants to make VAIO successful again, it needs to offer the same product excellence, but without the premium price, sort of like Motorola, Xiaomi and HTC have been doing in 2014.
