Sony considers sale of Vaio PC business
Sony is in talks to offload its PC business to an investment fund for around $490m, according to reports.
A report in the Nikkei Asian Review said that Sony is in discussion with Japan Industrial Partners (JIP), which recently bought BigGlobe, one of Japan's biggest ISPs, from NEC.
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According to Nikkei, JIP is setting up a fund that will establish a new company to take over Sony's entire Vaio PC business. The sale price is estimated to be 40 billion yen to 50 billion yen ($391 million to $489 million), according to the Nikkei report.
Sony today issued a statement to say that the company has made no announcement on its future in PCs and the future of the Vaio brand.
"As Sony has announced previously," read the statement, "Sony continues to address various options for the PC business, but Sony has no further comments."
Last Saturday, Sony issued a denial after rumours it was going to sell its PC business to Lenovo. In a very similar statement the company said then that it was continuing to look at its options for the PC business but was not ready to make an announcement.
According to the analysts Gartner, PC shipments fell 10 percent in 2013, returning to 2009 levels, marking the worst ever decline.