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Toshiba Exits the Notebook PC Business
My first notebook was Toshiba’s Protégé in 1990 and it educated me on the power of local computing. So it is with regret that we report that Toshiba is joining the ranks of Japanese tech giants that have bowed out of the PC industry. Gizmodo reports that Toshiba has quietly sold its remaining 19.9 percent stake in its Dynabook laptop brand to Sharp, officially exiting the laptop business, and really the PC business at large. The company hadn’t been a major name in PCs for a while (it sold the 80.1% stake to Sharp in 2018), but this is still notable as the end to a 35-year chapter in the firm’s history. The company was a pioneer in the portable computer space, as Computer World explained. Its T1100 from 1985 is widely considered the first mainstream laptop computer, and set a design template for portables that didn’t change much until Apple’s PowerBook line arrived in 1991. Toshiba thrived in the 1990s and 2000s with its Satellite, Protégé and Qosmio lines — this writer’s first laptop was a 13.3-inch Satellite from 2002. The Registerobserved, rivals like Apple, Dell, and Lenovo also beat Toshiba at its own game with ultraportables like the MacBook Air and XPS series.
My first notebook was Toshiba’s Protégé in 1990 and it educated me on the power of local computing. So it is with regret that we report that Toshiba is joining the ranks of Japanese tech giants that have bowed out of the PC industry. Gizmodo reports that Toshiba has quietly sold its remaining 19.9 percent stake in its Dynabook laptop brand to Sharp, officially exiting the laptop business, and really the PC business at large. The company hadn’t been a major name in PCs for a while (it sold the 80.1% stake to Sharp in 2018), but this is still notable as the end to a 35-year chapter in the firm’s history. The company was a pioneer in the portable computer space, as Computer World explained. Its T1100 from 1985 is widely considered the first mainstream laptop computer, and set a design template for portables that didn’t change much until Apple’s PowerBook line arrived in 1991. Toshiba thrived in the 1990s and 2000s with its Satellite, Protégé and Qosmio lines — this writer’s first laptop was a 13.3-inch Satellite from 2002. The Registerobserved, rivals like Apple, Dell, and Lenovo also beat Toshiba at its own game with ultraportables like the MacBook Air and XPS series.
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Barry Young
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