Sony is reportedly disposing of the iconic VAIO brand, and with it, its PC division. The brand and its assets will be sold off to Japan Industrial Partners (JIP), much in the same way as IBM disposed its PC business and Thinkpad brands over to Lenovo (which was a major supplier to IBM at the time). We won't see the last of VAIO notebooks, Ultrabooks, tablets, and convertibles, only that they won't be sold by Sony. The deal is part of Sony's larger efforts to shed underperforming businesses.

JIP could establish a new PC company from the assets it buys off Sony. In all likelihood, the VAIO brand could be retained, although the company's name itself hasn't been finalized. The new company will see Sony transfer 300 of its employees, to jump-start operations. The MoU signed between Sony and JIP seems to suggest that the company will prioritize Japan over global markets, in what is a similar strategy to Lenovo's. The Chinese company, after acquiring IBM's PC assets, focused its efforts on capturing the Chinese domestic markets with not just PCs, but also smartphones and tablets.