Asus to make grab for Toshiba's notebook biz?
Top-three vendor ranking to follow
Asus may seek to acquire Toshiba’s notebook business in order to become the world’s third-largest laptop manufacturer, the Taiwanese firm has said.
Outspoken company chief Johnny Shih said Toshiba’s notebook business has been identified as one of Asus’ possible targets, according to a report by Chinese-language website Commercial Times, as cited by Digitimes.
Asus has already had contact of some sort with Toshiba, Shih reportedly added, but nothing has been finalised.
Toshiba shipped 2.8m notebooks worldwide during the first quarter of 2009, according to market watcher Display Search, while Asus shipped just 800,000.
HP currently rules the global notebook market, but second-place Acer has already said it hopes to overtake HP in 2010 by shipping in excess of 40m notebooks during the calendar year.
The global notebook PC market was worth an estimated $26.4bn (£15.5bn/€17.6bn) during Q2 2009, according to Display Search figures. ®
COMMENTS
Echoes Lenovo
This reminds me of Lenovo, man those laptops were shit. I must've seen half of them come back. If this affects my brand new Toshiba's warranty, I won't be a happy camper.
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
Say it ain't so! I was only telling hubby this morning how I lurve me my Tosh lappies. They're not as fugly as Lenovo, don't run hot like HP/Compaqs, don't have funky BIOSs like the Dells, aren't as flaky as MSIs, and are not as pretentious (or unrealistically expensive) as Sonys. Tosh lappies look nice, are nicely specced and Just. Work. What more does any serious user need?
Asus gunning for the Toshiba notebook business? Say it ain't so!
Oh no!
If this goes ahead we'll lose the one laptop manufacturer that managed to combine reasonable prices with reliability.
Oh well...
...that'll put an end to me buying any more Toshiba laptops if it happens. Personally I've had seven or eight Tosh laptops over the years and advised many other friends on Tosh lappies. They'll be much missed in my household. Oh well ... now to hunt the long standing Thinkpad jungle for the odd gems that exist in there somewhere.
