To anyone who has been paying attention to the Dell restructure earlier this year, or has say, turned on a tv or browsed Google or spent any time in your local coffee shop, Sony’s announcement last week that they were moving out of the PC business should come as no surprise to you. Technology is one of the fastest changing industries in the world, but a few trajectories have remained the same over the last few years – the need to make things smaller, make them faster, more portable, and more wearable. The PC World is obviously not left with a whole lot of wiggle room given these parameters. In 2013 we saw the global PC market take its biggest hit yet, with research technology firm Gartner estimating that the PC market shrunk by a whopping 10% last year alone. When you estimate that Sony now holds less than 2% of that business, it makes obvious fiscal sense that they would focus their attention to more lucrative products like their upcoming 4K TV’s, the PlayStation 4 and of course post-PC products like smartphones and tablets.

 
Along with any major reform or overhaul to a company, one can expect a certain amount of fallout; Sony’s departure from the PC business is no exception. Along with the statement announcing the sale of their PC business and the VAIO brand to Japanese Industrial Partners (JIP) came the news that roughly 5,000 jobs (1,500 in Japan and 3,500 overseas) will be cut by the end of the 2014 fiscal year. The new company (JIP) expects to hire between 250 and 300 former Sony employees from design, development manufacturing and sales to assist with the transition, and even plans to remain based in Nagano, the current home of the Sony VAIO headquarters. Additionally, they have already stated that they intend to honor all aftercare warranties associated with the product. In an effort to assist with a smooth and successful transition, Sony is investing 5% of the company’s initial capital. Recent estimates predict that the restructure of the PC business, coupled with the decision to make the TV arm of the company a wholly owned subsidiary company of Sony, leaves the company looking at a makeover to the tune of 20 billion yen.

 
As they depart from the world of PC, Sony looks to a more visual future, focusing more intently on the budding 4K TV market. They announced last week that they have decided to “split out the TV business and operate it as a wholly-owned subsidiary”, with the targeted timeframe for the completion of this transition by July 2014. Sony President and CEO Kazuo Hirai recently stated in an earnings conference that “From next year onward, the 4K market is expected to grow. By splitting out the TV business, its management speed will be accelerated and responses to markets will be speedier”.

 
In addition to increased focus on the TV arm of the business, Sony continues to keep a steady foothold in the gaming and portable device markets. Their PlayStation 4 sold 4.2 billion units and 9.7 million games in its first six weeks, as well as seeing a dramatic increase in their PlayStation Plus subscriptions. And while product lines likes smartphones and tablets have seen innovative updates to their products, and a Q3 2013 earnings release shows a year-on-year sales increase for its mobile business, Sony still expects losses for the year to total around 110 billion yen (about $1.1 billion) for 2013 – a far cry from their initial prediction of a 30 billion yen profit for the year. Given the facts, it seems more than reasonable that a business as big as Sony would choose to go the profitable route and “go where the money is”. The next few years will show whether this type of shift in product focus will be a successful route for other major technology giants moving into the future.