VAIO
More info
- Creator
- Sony
- Released
- 1996
- Type
- PC maker
- Website
- vaio.com
Sony's PC brand that outlived Sony's exit from computers — now a small company of its own in Nagano.
Sony launched VAIO in 1996, the name originally standing for Video Audio Integrated Operation. The logo is meant to read as a wave followed by a one and a zero: analogue meets digital. Slim magnesium machines like the 1997 VAIO 505 made the brand a design icon when most laptops were beige and chunky, and much of what was later sold as the ultrabook was already there.
Margins shrank as Lenovo, Dell and HP squeezed prices, and in 2014 Sony sold the business to investment firm Japan Industrial Partners. The new VAIO Corporation carried on at small scale from its factory in Azumino, and in 2025 electronics retailer Nojima became majority owner.