Japanese tech giant Toshiba has exited from the laptop business. The company, last week, transferred its remain stake in the PC business to Sharp.
Toshiba had a minority stake of 19.9 percent until last week before it transferred them to Sharp. In 2018, the company sold 80.1 percent of its PC business to Sharp for USD 36 million, and the division was later renamed as Dynabook.
Under the terms of the share purchase agreement, Sharp exercised a call option for the remaining outstanding shares of Dynabook held by Toshiba, and the latter has completed procedures for their transfer.
Dynabook is now a wholly-owned subsidiary of Sharp, Toshiba confirmed.
Toshiba entered the PC business in 1985 with its T1100, which was marketed as the world's first mass-market laptop computer”. Back in the day, the laptop was available for USD 2,000.
While the company did have a successful run in the PC business during the 1990s and 2000s, Toshiba struggled to compete against emerging players that flooded the PC market with options. This, coupled with the lack of new features, waned Toshiba’s laptop business worldwide.
In 2011, the company told over 17.7 million PCs. However, the sales declined significantly every year since then and Toshiba managed to sell only 1.4 million PCs in 2017.
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