Toshiba sells stake to end 35-year run in laptop business
Japanese electronics maker Toshiba said it will no longer make laptops after transferring its remaining share of the personal computer business to Sharp.
The company sold an 80.1 per cent stake in its PC business to Foxconn-owned Sharp for $36 million (Dh132.12m) in 2018.
Sharp renamed the division Dynabook in January 2019.
“Toshiba Corporation hereby announces that it has transferred the 19.9 per cent of the outstanding shares in Dynabook that it held to Sharp Corporation ... as a result of this transfer, Dynabook has become a wholly owned subsidiary of Sharp,” the company said.
“On June 30, 2020, under the terms of the share-purchase agreement, Sharp exercised a call option for the remaining outstanding shares of Dynabook held by Toshiba ... and Toshiba has completed [the] procedures for their transfer.”
The company did not disclose the value of the transaction, which ended its 35-year run in the PC business.
Toshiba unveiled its first laptop, the T1100, in 1985. Weighing about four kilograms, the model was initially launched in Europe with a modest annual sales target of 10,000 units and a price tag of $2,000.
Despite the company’s initial inhibitions, the T1100 was a huge success.
Toshiba was among the main PC makers in the 1990s and 2000s. However, its market share dropped significantly as a wave of new entrants offered cheaper and more innovative options.
At its peak in 2011, Toshiba sold 17.7 million PCs but that number shrank to just 1.4 million units in 2017, according to Reuters.
Global PC sales increased by 0.6 per cent last year, ending seven consecutive years of decline, according to US research company Gartner.
The number of shipments stood at more than 261 million units in 2019, about 1.5 million more than the same period a year earlier.
Chinese technology company Lenovo is now market leader with a 24.1 per cent market share, followed by American companies HP and Dell with 22.2 per cent and 16.8 per cent, respectively, according to Gartner.
Industry analysts expect the growth in PC sales to continue this year as more employees switch to working from home due to the coronavirus pandemic.