VAIO Brand is Being Diluted?

Today we have been getting reports from the Internet universe that a new division within VAIO will be taking place and Sony calls it “division two” which pretty much means that third party brands will be cranking out VAIO notebooks. Supposedly this move will allow VAIO notebooks become less expensive. Sony will still be designing and making VAIOs in its Japanese and Chinese factories. In an exclusive interview with PC Pro, the deputy president of Sony VAIO’s Business Group announced a two-tier strategy for the company’s laptop division, with “division one” for the VAIO laptops designed and built by Sony, and a “division two” for VAIO models built by its partners.

I have checked out a number of comments and a lot of them were not happy with Sony’s move and a concern for quality and design would be at risk. We are pretty much used to Sony’s awesome design in its VAIO line and Akahane insisted the new products would be of the same quality as existing VAIOs. “The quality criteria itself is no different between division number one and division number two.” Instead the difference will be in the technology. “We will include new technology [such as the latest processors] in division number one first, and then we can learn and we can get the know-how, then we can transfer [the technology] to the products coming from division two.”

I am not too happy about this move either and do not support this idea, but we shall see what the market does and how consumers react after all.