It looks like Toshiba's getting out of the laptop business
It's been a little while since Toshiba was really in the swing of things on the computer front - it's clearly been scaling back its laptop making for years now, and sold 80.1% of its business unit in that area to Sharp in 2018.
Now, it's confirmed that the retreat is complete - last week, it sold off the remaining 19.9% share of the business it had retained, giving Sharp total control. That was the Dynabook division, and it sounds from the press release Toshiba issued as though Sharp actually had the option to complete the transfer, and exercised it.
That quite simply and straightforwardly brings an end to Toshiba's presence in the PC market, barring any changes of stragey and new brands that it might invest in.
It's easy to forget, too, in this age of MacBook domination and ultrabooks, that Toshiba was active in the PC market for absolutely ages, very much one of the legacy brands, having put out its first portable laptop all the way back in 1985.
While the market's become more and more competitive, and consumers more and more savvy, it looks as though Toshiba simply struggled to keep up with the evolving expectations of quality in material terms, and that might be one part of why it's stepped back from the sector.
Effectively, it looks like if you're not Apple, Dell or one of the other players like Asus and Acer, the laptop market isn't an easy place to be right now.
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