I must admit that while I was fully-aware that Toshiba wasn’t the force it was (particularly in the ’90s) regarding laptops, I didn’t realize that things had gotten quite so bad for the company that, back in 2018, they sold a hugely significant portion of their laptop division to Sharp (roughly 80%).
While Sharp has since been making some excellent progress under the new “Dynabook” branding (particularly in Japan), in a report via TheRegister it seems that the success has been so good that Sharp has exercised its right to purchase the remaining 20% of shares. In other words, Toshiba is no longer involved in the business of making laptops.
Toshiba is Out of the Laptop Market!
I must admit, I’m genuinely surprised by this news. As I noted earlier, Toshiba isn’t the force it once was, but I still widely associated them with laptops in general. The biggest part of the problem, however, was that while many other companies looked to innovate and improve, Toshiba largely remained stagnant.
They became unfashionable, less prestigious, and the rest, as they say, is history. As such, while the news is still surprising, the more you think about it, the more it does kind of seem to make sense.
What About the Future?
While Toshiba will, of course, continue to develop PC components (largely storage drives) it seems that in terms of actual system/laptop manufacturing, they’re completely out of the loop now. So, if you do have a Toshiba laptop, hold onto it. You never know, it might just be a collector’s item one day!
What do you think? Are you surprised by this news? Do you own a laptop? If so, which brand/make is it? – Let us know in the comments!
