Toshiba has exited the laptop industry without prior notice or warning. This ends its 35 years presence in the laptop manufacturing industry, after it transferred the final part of its minority shares to Sharp.

Source; https://africaatrandom.com/toshiba-pulls-out-of-the-laptop-business/

The company sold about 80% of its shares about two years ago to Sharp for a meagre $36 million, subsequent to which Sharp decided to name the laptop division as Dynabook. Sharp then went ahead to trigger its right of purchase on the rest of Toshiba’s minority shares back in June this year, and the transfer process was finalized last week.

Toshiba released an official statement on the 4th of August;

“As a result of this transfer, Dynabook has become a wholly owned subsidiary of Sharp,” The statement said.

Toshiba made its first PC laptop more than 30 years ago in 1985: “The T1100 boasted internal rechargeable batteries, a 3.5-inch floppy drive, and 256K of memory. ComputerWorld’s 20-year retrospective of the T1100 notes that Toshiba executives were unsure about the portable computer, but eventually came around, and began selling the T1100 for around $2,000.”

From the early 1990’s all the way to the 2000’s, Toshiba remained one of the top PC manufacturers in the world. But with the entry of newer players, the company could not innovate and differentiate its products enough to stand out and survive a space that had become highly competitive.

According to the Reuters, by the time Toshiba sold its stake to Sharp, it’s share of the PC market had dwindled from its 2011 peak of 17.7 million PCs sold to about 1.4 million in 2017.

The laptop market has become quite an interesting space over the last couple of years with the advent of innovative and portable devices becoming the “in thing.” The entry of new market players has created significant shifts, coupled with consumer tastes and demands. Thus companies not ready or willing to innovate would have a difficulty surviving and might eventually get swept out.