Today Sony showcased its latest Vaio series fleet debutantes and announced its Blitzkrieg strategy to double its sales from 2.5 lacs from last year to 5 lacs this year and also revealed its plans to capture the Indian market share from 15% to 20% by the end of the year. Well and how do they plan to do it? Read on to find out…
The event hosted at Hyatt Regency was kicked off by Mr. Masaru Tamagawa, MD Sony India. He started the proceedings by sharing statistics on the performance of Sony Vaio brand in India as well as its aggressive expansion plans. Sony Vaio till last year had a market share of 15% and total sales of 2.5 lac units which it plans to double by the end of this year to an ambitious 20% which it aims to achieve by reaching sales of 5 lac units in FY11.
For achieving the same Sony Vaio has launched its “More Colour. More Style” campaign with an investment to the tune of Rs. 25 crores allocated to this campaign alone of the budgeted Rs.50 crores, wherein all the series will be aggressively promoted via all media channels. They also plan to open around 30 exclusive Sony Vaio flagship stores in India along with 700 more channel networks by the end of this year itself.
To begin with they have introduced this new series of laptops the Vaio S, C, E & Y series which are truly competently priced (more in detail later). In the entire Vaio product lineup now boasts of 62 models with 16 colours in the Vaio S, C, E & Y series. The series was unveiled by Kareena Kapoor, Brand Ambassador for Sony Vaio along with other models.
The series includes the following:
Vaio S: It is the premium series of the Vaio brand wherein the range starts from Rs. 48,000 to 1.3 lacs. It’s targeted at the corporates and professionals. It has a full flat body making it immensely slim and light, as well.
Vaio C: It is a more fashionable series which is made of these “light-emitting material” as they call it. It’s available in six different colours and the range starts from Rs. 54,990 up to Rs. 69,990.
Vaio E: It is intended for general every day use and targeted towards students and young professionals. Available in 4 colours the series start from Rs. 27,990 and increases based on the configurations.
Vaio Y: Targeted at the beginners, these are the lowest priced laptops with the range starting from Rs. 24,990.
In a chat with Mr. Muramatsu, Product Manager Vaio, revealed that we can expect even slimmer and lighter laptops in the S series in the next moth or two. We had a brief interview with Mr. Sachin Thapar who explained us how Vaio plans to grow and tackle various issues that might come up with the two fold surge in sales. Mr Thapar informed us that Sony Vaio plans to setup around 120 additional service centers across India to bring the turn around time further down of servicing their laptops. Vaio also has introduced onsite warranty for the C series as well along with the S series. Besides they also have implemented the now common, remote diagnostics and on-call service, which he claims now helps resolve about 80% of the issues.
Well we are positively impressed with the range of laptops they have introduced at such competitive price points. It would be fascinating to see how successful they are in achieving their targets in terms of market share and sales.
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