Toshiba has quietly exited the PC business. The firm had, in recent years, already stepped back significantly so the change won't cause much of a stir for end users, or the industry in general.
Back in 2018 Toshiba sold 80.1 per cent of its computer making business to Sharp and the new operation took the name Dynabook, a sub-brand Toshiba had used since 1958. Last Tuesday Toshiba published a short press release saying that it had sold its 19.9 per cent remaining stake in Dynabook, which has thus become a wholly owned subsidiary of Sharp. For the record, Sharp Corporation is majority owned by Foxconn.
As indicated above, Toshiba has a long history in laptop making and some will consider a shame to see it gone without so much as a ripple in the news. Some say Toshiba produced the world's first mass-market laptop PC, in 1985, in the shape of the Toshiba T1100. The T1100 featured am Intel 0C88 @ 4.77MHz, 256kB RAM, a built-in 3.5-inch floppy, and a 9.1 x 4.2 inch 640 x 200 pixel mono LCD. It weighed in at 4.1kg and is pictured below.
With this head start and investment in new designs Toshiba went on to feature in the top five PC vendors through the 90s and noughties, rubbing shoulders with the likes of Lenovo, Apple, HP and Dell.
I nearly bought the Toshiba Satellite U845W Ultrabook with ultra-wide display back in 2013 (pictured below) but ended up getting a Sony Vaio with 14-inch 900p screen (Ivy Bridge i7 and discrete Radeon graphics) instead.
