Toshiba stops selling consumer laptops in Europe

Toshiba will focus on the supply of business laptops and will focus only on the Japanese and American markets as far as consumer laptops are concerned. The move is part of a major reorganization that will cost 6,800 jobs.

Toshiba announced on Monday that it expected an annual loss of 550 billion yen, converted to 4.17 billion euros. To turn the tide, the Japanese group is carrying out a major reorganization that will cost 6800 jobs at the Lifestyle Products & Services branch, which includes the PC and TV business units. This concerns 30 percent of the total workforce and the redundancy round must be completed by March 31, 2016.

Toshiba will reduce costs at that PC branch, for example by firing employees, although it is not clear how much. The manufacturer is significantly reducing its PC sales, which mainly consist of laptops, and will only focus on the business market worldwide. Toshiba is only concentrating consumer laptops on the American and Japanese markets, the company said in a statement.

The number of product platforms will be reduced to less than a third of the current number and Toshiba will take full control of the design and production of PCs. To this end, the PC branch, the Personal & Client Solutions Company, will be spun off on 1 April and transferred to Toshiba Information Equipments. In addition, Toshiba is considering an alliance with a third party for its PC business. In early December, it was rumored that Toshiba, Fujitsu and Vaio were negotiating to merge their PC branches.

The TV business unit is also experiencing changes. Toshiba will sell a TV factory in Indonesia and will move to a licensing model in Africa and the Middle East, with Egyptian joint ventures producing and selling Toshiba branded devices. Toshiba already operates a licensing model in the TV market in Europe and the US.

Toshiba ran into serious trouble after an accounting scandal came to light. For years, the group had presented its results far too positively: in seven years Toshiba earned 115 billion yen less than published, about 862 million euros. As a result, the shares went into free fall.