The PC hardware business is supposed to be in trouble but someone apparently forgot to tell Vizio. The well known maker of flat screen televisions which are sold at affordable prices will soon be offering consumers their own line of Windows-based PCs. Bloomberg reports that Vizio will officially announced plans to release two desktops PCs at CES 2012 next week, along with three notebook PCs.
The story also quotes Vizio"s Chief Technology Officer Matt McRae as saying that the cost to purchase their new PCs will be set at "a price that just doesn’t seem possible." Specifics about pricing were not revealed; however Vizio does expect to launch their PC lineup in June.
So why get into the PC market, when there"s already a lot of competition from HP, Dell, Acer, Lenovo and many more companies making these products? McRae says, "“It’s very similar to TV -- we want to get in there and disrupt it. We think most PCs have been designed for the small-business users, that others have not done a very good job of making them entertainment devices."
The desktop PCs will be designed as all-in-one devices with 24 and 27 inch screens. As far as notebooks go, Vizio will release two ultra-thin laptops with 14 and 15.6 inch screens and a standard notebook with a 15.6 inch screen.
The fact that a major new company like Vizio is entering the PC business has to be good news for Microsoft. Having a new PC maker means more Windows 7, and later Windows 8, operating systems will be installed on new PC products.