Japanese giants considering combining their laptop and PC businesses, according to a media report
It’s been reported that Toshiba, Fujitsu
and Vaio are considering a merger of
their laptop PC businesses. According to a
report in The Nikkei financial newspaper,
the three companies have begun specific
discussions on the merger later, with the aim
of launching the company on 1 April, when
the next Japanese financial year begins.
Vaio was spun off from Sony in mid-2014
and will likely be the surviving entity, with
Toshiba and Fujitsu merging their laptop
businesses into the unit. Ownership will be
roughly equal, says The Nikkei.
roughly equal, says The Nikkei.
It wasn’t possible to immediately contact
the three companies for comment.
As we report opposite, global demand
for PCs is decreasing. In the third quarter
of 2015, shipments dropped to 71
million units, according to IDC.
Laptops made up the majority of
these sales at 42 million units, but
they were also down on the previous
year. “We’re entering a phase in the
PC industry where we are expecting
some consolidation to happen,” says
Linn Huang, an analyst at IDC.
He explains that price competition
is hurting PC makers, while the
prevalence of smartphones and
tablet PCs in homes is reducing
the need to continually refresh
machines as they get older.
The market is led by Lenovo, Dell, HP
and Apple, all of which do well in enterprise
laptop sales. Other brands are more
focused on the consumer market, which
is experiencing softer demand than the
enterprise sector, Huang adds. Weakness in
the domestic Japanese market is also hitting
the three companies in question, he says.
NEC, which was a market leader in the
Japanese laptop market, merged its portable
PC business with Lenovo in 2011.
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