Sony becoming a sleeper PC giant

Thanks nextyxp...Despite flopping in the PC market a few years ago, Japanese consumer-electronics giant Sony has finally stepped up to become one of the computer industry's big players. The company's worldwide computer shipments grew faster than those of any other major brand in 2001, according to statistics from research firm Gartner Dataquest. And this year, shipments increased 23.7 percent in the second quarter, even as the market shrank by nearly a percentage point. With these gains, Sony has marched from its No. 12 spot in worldwide market share at the end of last year to No. 8 at the end of the second quarter.

"They're borrowing from several of the success strategies in the PC business," said Roger Kay, an analyst with research firm IDC. "They have a bit of the operational excellence of Dell, some of the gawk-gawk design of Apple and some of the total solutions idea from IBM--only targeted at the home retail market."

Shipments of Sony Vaio PCs into the U.S. retail market are up nearly threefold in the first six months of 2002 compared with the same period in 2000, the pinnacle year for PC shipments. Compared with the same period in 2001, Sony is up almost 42 percent. And in handhelds, Sony has jumped up from 1.2 percent of the retail market in Oct. of 2000 to second in market share, to Palm, with about 22 percent of the market as of June 2002.

News source: C|net