Toshiba formally leaves the laptop business
Toshiba has formally announced its departure from the laptop business after a 35-year run.
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Last week, the Japanese tech giant said that outstanding shares of Dynabook, 19.9%, are now owned by Sharp.
Dynabook, once known as Toshiba America Client Solutions and Toshiba's main laptop arm, was rebranded in January 2019. In June 2018, Sharp acquired 80.1% of the business, and now, Dynabook is wholly-owned by the Japanese conglomerate.
"On June 30, 2020, under the terms of the share purchase agreement, Sharp exercised a call option for the remaining outstanding shares of Dynabook held by Toshiba, and Toshiba has completed procedures for their transfer," Toshiba said in a statement.
Toshiba launched its first PC back in 1985, following in the footsteps of IBM's PC in 1981. The T1100, released in Europe, was one of the first laptop designs on the market and utilized floppy disks. The company then launched laptops in the US and Japan in the following year.
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Since then, however, Toshiba has struggled with stiff competition and financial loss, made worse by a 2015 accounting scandal in which the company admitted to overstating profits by up to $2 billion over the previous seven years.
Once made public, Toshiba sought to restructure, dramatically cutting down its workforce, setting in place a new management team, and selling a number of assets including factories and the firm's image sensor business to Sony.
The company also sold assets belonging to Toshiba's nuclear power arm, Westinghouse Electric Company, in 2018 for $4.6 billion. The firm, which went bankrupt, was the subject of a lawsuit after pulling out of the planned construction of two nuclear plants in South Carolina.
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Toshiba found itself embroiled in the court case, which sought damages for the failed projects. However, last month (.PDF), the lawsuit was withdrawn.
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