Earlier this year, Sony walked away from laptops when it sold off its Vaio business. Now Toshiba is following suit. Nothing’s getting sold this time around, but the Japanese company has said it’s shying away from consumer PCs in certain low-profit regions in favour of beefing up business offerings.
Toshiba explains its retreat from the consumer space calling it “volatile and over-dependent on sales scale and volume” in a press release from earlier today. This comes right around the time that plummeting consumer laptop sales are actually starting to level out. Still, it’s hard to hack it down where they have settled.
In the meantime, Toshiba will focus on business-to-business sales and promoting the “Internet of Things” while it scales consumer sales back and totally pulls out in some (unspecified) markets. While Toshiba’s press release doesn’t specify what regions are affected, a representative has reached out to use to confirm that the U.S. consumer business will remain intact. So if you were hoping for a new ultra-widescreen Toshiba laptop, there’s still hope so long as you live in the right place. [Toshiba]