The companies will hope that their new collective will be able to reverse the recent slowdown in global PC sales, which have suffered from issues including competition from mobile devices like smartphones and tablets-even with slowing growth in those markets-longer PC lifecycles, falling commodity prices and a strong U.S. dollar.
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Vaio was the personal computer business spun off from Sony in 2014, which has been closing in on a three-way merger with rivals to create a producer that can dominate Japan and survive a shrinking global PC market.
Bloomberg reports that Hidemi Moue, the CEO of Vaio parent company Japan Industrial Partners Inc., said that the three firms are expected to come to an agreement to combine their computing arms by the end of March. “We can do it with minimal cannibalisation”.
It’s unclear whether the merger will proceed at a global level, though Moue didn’t rule out aiming future products at the global market, given its recently released Windows 10 phone for the Japanese market. “This approach of merging three Japanese PC makers will probably have little chance of success outside of the country”. The market is expected to be in retreat for most of 2016. So you might not be buying a Vaio-Toshiba-Fujitsu hybrid just yet, even if things get decided in March.
NEC Lenovo controlled about 29% of PC shipments in Japan from July to September, according to IDC.
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The company is the world’s seventh biggest PC maker, according to IDC, which predicts that two of the top 10 PC players will shutter operations within the next two years.
