Published 17:21 IST, August 10th 2020
Toshiba exits from Laptop business, sells minority stakes to Japanese MNC 'Sharp'
Toshiba announced its exit from the laptop business. The 35-year journey came to an end with a transfer of the minority stake to the Japanese MNC, Sharp.
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The Japanese tech giant, Toshiba recently announced its exit from the laptop business. The 35-year journey came to an end with a transfer of the minority stake to the Japanese multinational corporation, Sharp. 80.01% stake of Toshiba’s Personal Computer business was sold to Sharp at $36 million in 2018. This line was renamed by Sharp as Dynabook.
In June 2020, Sharp exercised its right to purchase the remaining 19.1% shares. On August 4, Toshiba released a statement about the deal. The official statement released by Toshiba claimed that they had transferred the remaining 19.1% shares to Dynabook Inc. It also mentioned that Dynabook was hence the wholly-owned subsidiary of Sharp from that date onwards.
Toshiba’s Personal Computer journey:
In 1985, Toshiba was out with its first PC laptop. These were the satellite range of laptops. The Toshiba laptop, T1100 was also referred to as the world's first mass-market laptop computer. The Toshiba laptop, T1100 had internal rechargeable batteries, a 256K of memory, and a 3.5-inch floppy drive. The Toshiba T1100 had an MS-DOS 2.11 operating system. It had a 9.1-by-4.7-inch black-and-white display. Further, its introductory price was about US $1,899. The Japanese tech giant, Toshiba reportedly sold about 30 million satellite laptops.
1990-2000s:
Toshiba was regarded as one of the best PC manufactures during the 1990s and early 2000s. In 1990, the company was out with its first colour screen. During the time, Toshiba also installed CD-ROM and DVD drives in its laptops. Further, its competitors had not launched CD-ROM and DVD drives by that time. According to a report by Verge, Toshiba’s personal computer share greatly declined tremendously by the time it sold its shares. As per reports, from 17.7 million Personal Computers in 2011, Toshiba sold 1.4 million personal computers in 2017.
Toshiba America Information Systems:
Toshiba America Information Systems Inc. (TAIS) consists of 4 business units. These units are Digital Products Division, Imaging Systems Division, Storage Device Division, and Telecommunication Systems Division. These units provide products like imaging products, storage products for automotive, computer and consumer electronics applications, and several others.
Disclaimer: The above information is sourced from various websites/ media reports. The website does not guarantee a 100% accuracy of the figures
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17:20 IST, August 10th 2020