Affordable new notebooks target consumers in bid to recapture share

Toshiba is attempting to recapture lost notebook market share with four new notebooks, all sporting either Pentium II or Celeron 400MHz chips, DVD players and affordable price tags.

The Japanese notebook giant is including more frills such as the DVD feature for the same price as it targets consumers.

'We are no longer only targeting the businessman,' said Vivian Choy, marketing manager at Chevalier, Toshiba's distributor in Hong Kong. 'There is a growing demand for notebooks by consumers to use the notebook to maximise their productivity, as a mobile type of entertainment or to replace the desktop.' IDC analyst Kitty Fok said Toshiba's new focus on consumer notebook buyers, while belated, was a good move.

While notebook sales to companies made up the bulk of sales, individual sales were substantial now and Toshiba was losing out to IBM in this sector.

Up until two years ago, Toshiba had twice the worldwide notebook market share of its closest competitor, IBM. Its lead is now shaky.

Toshiba is marginally ahead of IBM, which has built a reputation around its ThinkPad brand name, broadened its product range and introduced the ThinkPad i series aimed at consumers.

According to IDC, Toshiba had 18.7 per cent of the Asia-Pacific notebook market in the first quarter of this year. IBM was 1.4 per cent behind.