sony india believes that the decision to sell off the vaio brand and laptop business and hive off the tv business into a separate entity will allow operations in the television and mobile phone segments in each market to become more dynamic and adapt swiftly to local needs in an interaction with et managing director kenichiro hibi who has been talking to distributors and channel partners allaying fears about the companys intentions in india says that the company will not lay off any employee in the country which will become one of its key markets globally edited excerpts why has the company decided to shift focus away from laptops kenichiro hibi we have been investing a lot of money and manpower to develop new technologies this power and focus will shift mainly to mobile and tablet segments an industry area which is surging higher than other categories we will put more resources and our heritage in developing the mobile business which is the future growth area this change allows more dynamic decisions and improves the business velocity by having lighter operations particularly in india what will happen to employees working in pc and tv businesses kenichiro hibi while our television business continues and is expected to grow we may look at increasing manpower in this segment depending on business development as far as laptop business is concerned we will be moving all employees in this segment to mobile phone division we have over 7000 employees including shopfront associates none of them will be laid off what happens to the vaio brand kenichiro hibi we will shut selling the vaio brand of laptops after the next line of products is launched in februarymarch in india but we will continue to offer service for a year in warranty period and for those not under warranty we will continue to offer service for a reasonable time the vaio trademark will remain with sony which will license it for royalties but the business will be sold to another company which will largely focus on japan do you expect sonys tv business to generate the same interest kenichiro hibi we expect the speed of growth in the tv business to be much faster where we already have a market share of around 30 our premium strategy on bravia has been well accepted we will expand our distribution into indias upcountry regions customers dont need to worry about anything as they will continue to get sales and service in television sonys television business will become a separate legal entity by july but will continue to be 100 owned by the corporate it will become just like the mobile and playstation verticals that are also separate entities under sony corp what will be sonys strategy in smartphones this year where will india fit in the strategy kenichiro hibi in fy14 onethird of sony indias sales come from mobile business when it used to be 1015 in fy13 sony india sales will grow by 25 in fy14