Sony launches range of notebooks for business
Consumer electronics brand hopes to gain marketshare in growing SME sector
Sony has unveiled its first ever range of notebooks aimed at business users, which the vendor hopes will help it win business in the SME space.
“Sony has always been a consumer brand, but there is now rapid growth in the business-to-business market. Since the launch of our Sony 1 partner programme, we’re starting to win more SME business,” said Raj Pandya, senior manager UK at Sony’s AV/IT reseller division.
The Vaio Professional business notebooks will be out next week and will include integrated fingerprint reader, videoconferencing and removable modular bay.
“We have been waiting for the Sony Vaio Professional set to be launched to complement our Sony 1 partner programme. The benefit for resellers is that it will provide them with a product for all verticals,” Pandya claimed.
At a preview event at The London Stock Exchange last week, more than 200 Sony dealers learned how the Vaio Professional range helped Ellen MacArthur navigate her way around the world; how the England cricket team used the notebooks to fine-tune its performance; and how they were used by vessels in the world’s toughest yacht race, the Global Challenge.
Colin Goodward, IT group product manager at Sony, told CRN: “Showing our resellers how the technology works in various environments gives them collateral to take to their customers as proof of what the notebooks can do.”
Leanne Gravil, branch manager at VAR CBC Computer Systems, said: “Our main market is SME and I would say Toshiba and Hewlett-Packard are the main players in the notebook market. Sony will have a lot of work to do to take business away from them. I’d be interested to see what support Sony will offer because some of our customers that have bought Sony consumer notebooks have complained about the lack of support.”