Although the PC market is in turmoil, Toshiba believes all is not lost and there is still room for growth. Speaking at the sidelines of a notebook launch event on Tuesday, Toshiba UK product manager Paul Hicks expressed a bit of optimism, which is becoming a rare commodity in the PC industry.
“There is a very dynamic market at the moment and there have been influences from tablets on the PC market, but there is still a very large PC market out there,” he said.
Toshiba tends to do quite well in the UK, better than in many European markets. Its notebooks are the top choice of education establishments and businesses and it ranks second in the retail market, IBT reports.
However, Toshiba is looking beyond traditional notebook designs. At Computex it launched a new high end tablet, with an impressive 2560×1600 display and a Tegra 4 SoC. Haswell laptops and Ultrabooks are also on the way, along with hybrids. Toshiba is betting on the success of touch-enabled notebooks in all price segments.
Hicks pointed out that Windows 8 enabled Toshiba to embrace touchscreens and that the trend is set to continue. At the moment touchscreens are reserved for high-end laptops and Ultrabooks, but it is only a matter of time before they trickle down into the low end. With its strong presence in education, it’s obvious why Toshiba thinks they make a lot of sense. Kids are used to them, even toddlers love tablets, and Toshiba wants to get them while they’re young.
As far as plain tablets go, Toshiba hasn’t really made its presence felt. Although it has some interesting devices, its focus still seems to be on pricey models, and high-end Android tablets don’t seem to be getting nearly as much traction as cheap 7- to 8-inch models.
