Toshiba has officially exited the laptop business after 35 years in the craft and transferred its remaining minority stake in the PC business to Sharp.
Two years ago, Sharp acquired an 80.1 percent stake of Toshiba’s PC business at $36 million and renamed the division Dynabook. Sharp exercised its right to acquire the remaining 19.1 percent stake in June this year, and announced that it had completed the deal this month.
Toshiba’s first PC laptop, the T1100 was made in 1985 boasting internal rechargeable batteries, a 3.5-inch floppy drive and 256k of memory. According to Computerworld’s 20 year retrospective of the T1100, the company executive were uncertain about the portable computer but eventually warmed up to it and even began selling it at $ 2,000 (about Kshs. 200,000)
Toshiba was one of the biggest PC brands in the 1990’s and 2000s and with the digital age, more names sprung up. The market got crowded Toshiba found themselves with less unique features to offer on their laptops, ultimately dimming their popularity.
According to Reuters, Toshiba’s share of the PC market dwindled from selling 17.7 million PCs sold in 2011 to about 1.4 million in 2017.
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