‘Vaio’ – hearing the brand name after a long time? You’ll be glad to know that the company sets an eye to comeback in India but with a different partner, named ‘Nexstgo’. If you remember, this is the company that brought Avita’s laptops to the Indian market. Now Nexstgo has done a license agreement with VAIO Corporation to come back alive in the scenario.
According to the agreements of these two companies, now Nexstgo has the proper rights to manufacture, market, and sell the Vaio laptops in Asian Countries including India, Singapore, Malaysia, and Hong Kong. In India, Flipkart will sell the Vaio laptops.
Once, Vaio was a part of Japanese tech giant Sony. In 1996, the company was first introduced as a Visual Audio Intelligent Organizer (VAIO). At that time, Sony’s Vaio laptops were pretty much expensive which led Sony to be in the top position in the competition with the other rival brands.
Do you know, even Steve Jobs, the CEO of Apple was a big admirer of the Vaio laptops? In 2001, Steve approached with an offer to the former Sony president for launching a Sony Vaio laptop with the macOS. However, the deal failed as Sony decided to stick with the most demanding Windows OS.
Being in the competition with Apple, Vaio laptops had much expensive price tags on their laptops. Meanwhile, other PC companies were offering the same specification in the lower price range. Back in 2010, Sony faced an overheating problem in Vaio laptops, and later the company had admitted that about half a million Vaio notebooks were facing this issue. Also in 2006, Sony had to replace ten million Sony-made batteries used in Sony, Apple, and Dell laptops, which costs Sony around $250 million.
After facing huge losses multiple times, in 2014 Sony made decision to sell off the Vaio PC brand to a Japanese investment fund. Still, Sony has a 5% stake in the new company. Since 2015, Vaio is selling independently the Vaio-branded laptops in Brazil and the US.
Now we have to wait and see how Vaio is going to grab the Indian market with Nexstgo. If Vaio comes with the premium high-end notebooks in the country, it will not be surprising where Dell XPS 13 and Apple Mac Book Pro is already dominating the market.
