The consolidation of Toshiba’s business (Toshiba Updates Forecasts, Deepens Loss) continues, with the news that the company is withdrawing from the consumer laptop business.
Although it had previously been reported that Toshiba would sell its PC business – or merge it with Fujitsu, and possibly Vaio – it’s not quite so clear that this will be the case. Anandtech reports that the firm will focus on B2B models in the future, and will continue to sell these worldwide. However, consumer laptops will only be produced for the Japanese market.
The purpose of the reorganisation is to make the PC unit more profitable, and to raise corporate PC competitiveness with rivals. The consumer business, which was more focused on unit share, was not profitable.
Due to the restructuring, Toshiba has cut its PC business employees by 1,300 and closed ‘multiple operation sites’.
Analyst Comment
This report does suggest that Toshiba may not be getting together with Fujitsu, which got out of the consumer PC business in Europe several years ago. Teaming up, with the Toshiba brand covering consumer products might have been a good solution. Running dual B2B brands is less obviously a good idea! However, the Nikkei said last week that the companies are still trying to align, but by the end of June, now. Toshiba recently sold its medical products business to Canon and last week said it would sell its home appliance business to Midea of China. (BR)
