Sony’s Vaio Brand Reappears Under New Management

In February, Sony unloaded its troubled, 8-year-old Vaio PC business to investment fund Japan Industrial Partners (JIP). Now, some four months later the brand has reappeared under the newly reconstituted Vaio Corp., of which Sony retains about 5 percent ownership.

While the new Vaio business hasn’t yet produced its own PCs, it has begun selling last year’s Sony-designed Vaio Fit 15E and the Vaio Pro laptops in the 11-inch and 13-inch screen sizes in the Japanese market. The units don’t carry the Sony brand but they are available to buy at Sony’s online store, according to a report in The Verge.

At the same time as the two Vaio models surfaced back on the market, another malfunctioning Sony PC has been recalled by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) over issues with overheating. Four units of Sony’s Flip PC model number SVF11N13CXS have overheated, prompting the vendor to recall the entire line and issue a notice on the CPSC’s website. Users of the affected Flip PC model are advised to shut it down and contact Sony to arrange for an evaluation, repair or full refund.

This is Sony’s second recall in the past few months. In April, the vendor warned that a defective battery in its Vaio Fit 11A could cause the unit to overheat. The defective Sony PCs involved in the product recall are not tied to the new Vaio Fit or Pro releases.

The new JIP-controlled PC entity will focus on sales of Vaio-branded, consumer and business PCs to customers in the Japan market before it considers expanding to other geographic regions. JIP publicly has said it expects it can do better with the Vaio-branded PC business than Sony.

An initial estimate pegged at 300 the number of Sony employees involved in the vendor’s PC operation who would move to JIP but a message posted on the Vaio.com website said the new company will employ about 240 people.