Japan’s Toshiba Corp. on Thursday unveiled a series of multimedia laptops with sharper displays and easy access to TV and DVD functions in a bid to rebuild profits at its PC division.
Toshiba, the world’s third-largest maker of notebook PCs, aims to benefit from growing demand for multimedia computers that can play and digitally record television programmes, DVDs and other video and audio materials from the Internet.
“Over the next five years, laptops with integrated audio-visual functions will become the standard model for the home market,” Toshiba corporate Executive Vice President Atsutoshi Nishida told reporters at a news conference.
Nishida is the executive tasked with turning around the company’s PC business, which posted a $200 million operating loss in the year ended in March, hit by aggressive pricing by Dell Inc. and Hewlett-Packard Co.
The “Qosmio” laptop comes with a built-in TV tuner and an 80-gigabyte hard disk drive for storing video while certain 15-inch models come with an LCD monitor that is brighter than some LCD televisions and standard notebook PCs.
Toshiba forecasts the market for laptops with integrated audio-visual functions to reach 14.1 million units in 2008 versus an estimated 1.3 million units in 2004.
It plans to launch sales of a 15-inch “Qosmio” on August 6 in Japan and then in the United States, England, Germany and France later that month. Widescreen versions, 15.4 inch and 17-inch, would be available by year-end, Toshiba officials said.
Tokyo-based Toshiba targets sales of 400,000 “Qosmio” units in the year to March 31 and plans to boost that figure to 1 million units in the coming business year.
Nishida said he expected “Qosmio” to make up about one-eighth of the company’s total PC shipments next year, suggesting a target of 8 million PCs for Toshiba in 2005/06, versus a forecast of 5.5 million units for this year.
“Since these are more expensive products, we expect this new lineup to comprise a bigger portion of our sales in money terms,” said Nishida.
Turnaround at Toshiba?
Toshiba came out with the world’s first laptop computer in 1985 and it held top spot in the notebook computer market for seven consecutive years to 2000, but it has seen its market share fall behind that of Dell and HP in recent years.
In a bid to regain its footing in the market, Toshiba implemented a plan last year to boost the ratio of outsourcing and reduce the number of production platforms and different parts to lower costs.
“We undertook a variety of restructuring measures and at this time we are seeing improvements beyond what we had expected,” said Nishida.
Toshiba aims for an operating profit of 11 billion yen ($100.1 million) at the PC and PC peripherals division in the year to March 2005.
It plans to focus most of its development efforts on high-end products to avoid head-to-head competition with more cost-efficient rivals in an increasingly brutal market.
The new laptops allow users to turn on the TV within 10 seconds or a DVD player within 20 seconds, by circumventing Microsoft Corp.’s operating system and avoiding a full start-up that takes up to several minutes on a normal laptop.
It said the new features, which also include a video chip to improve picture quality, a remote control and enhanced speakers, would differentiate its laptops from its competitors.
A Toshiba marketing official in Europe said the company expected other manufacturers, such as Dell and H-P, to introduce their own multimedia notebooks in the next six to nine months.
Toshiba’s 15-inch laptop will cost between 2,200 and 2,500 euros in Europe and $2,500 in the United States and between 220,000 and 260,000 yen in Japan. ($1=109.91 yen)
