Sony plans to unveil Vaio laptops in India soon

The Indian laptop market has been witnessing a steady growth lately, and now Sony is all set to launch its Vaio range of notebooks. The company has decided to roll out Vaio range nationally, this November. Sony is also planning to launch its TFT monitors by the year end.

"We are planning to launch Vaio range of laptops in India this November and the machines will be very competitively priced keeping in mind the recent price cut offered by almost all of the companies selling laptops in India. In the recently held Global Sales Forum in Tokyo which is an international meet of Sony and attended by representatives of Sony all over the world, top brass of the company decided to stress on launch of Audio Visual-Information Technology (AV-IT) products in BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) countries and so India will now be in focus for these products for Sony," Prosenjit Ghosh, branch manager (consumer sales) of Sony India Pvt Ltd, told Business Standard on Friday.

According to Ghosh, Sony will launch its range of TFT monitors during this year while there are also possibilities of launching its Playstations and desktop shortly.

"We are definitely not going to target the mass market with Vaio desktops as most of the existing products are of premium range and Sony will look for wooing the niche premium market for laptops in India with Vaio," said Ghosh.

The company is also stressing on strengthening its marketing network with setting up of more exclusive Sony outlets and pushing products simultaneously in the multibrand showrooms across the country.

At present, Vaio range has seven notebook offerings with X505 known as the high-end model, priced in the US market at $3,000, while T series notebooks of Vaio range is priced at $2,049 and A series notebooks at $1,249, which is the lowest priced offering from Sony.

Vaio also has Clearance range of notebooks and it is expected to launch few of the existing models in here in the first phase which may include Vaio's smallest laptop, X505.

Sources close to the company also said that Sony is planning to tie-up with few consumer finance company including GE Countrywide for easy instalment plans for its notebooks and TFT monitors.

However, Ghosh denied to divulge further information about Vaio marketing strategy. Sony will start marketing of a range of TFT LCD monitors which will be available in screen sizes varying from 43 cm to 58 cm.