Sharp bought 80% of Toshiba’s IT division in 2018 for $36 million (27 million pounds) and now bought the remaining shares, Toshiba said in a statement.
Toshiba’s first laptop, the T1100, introduced in 1985. It weighed four kg (8.8 pounds) and operated on 3.5-inch (8.8 cm) floppy disks.
First, it was introduced only in Europe with an annual sales target of 10,000 units, according to the Toshiba Science Museum website.
In 2011, Toshiba sold more than 17 million PCs, as of 2017 that figure had fallen to 1.9 million, Reuters reported at the time.
By 2016, it had stopped producing customer laptops for the European market, focusing only on commercial equipment.
That same year, its chairman and vice president resigned after an independent panel discovered that the company had exaggerated its profits over the past six years.
In 2019, he liquidated his NuGen nuclear business in the UK after failing to find a buyer.
Consumer demand for laptops has skyrocketed in recent months due to the coronavirus pandemic and global crashes, but overall, the computer market has been a challenge for some time, said CCS Insight’s Navy Koytcheva analyst.
“Only those who have controlled scale and value (like Lenovo), or who have a high-end logo (like Apple) have succeeded in the ruthless PC market, where volumes have been declining for years,” he says.