No more Toshiba?

Some news outlets in Japan are asking if Toshiba will be forced into foreclosure. The bookkeeping scandal seems to be more far-reaching than originally anticipated. Usually these things are handled behind the scenes by the bureaucracy that will divide the company between its competitors to save whatever is salvageable.

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Reminds me of the Olympus scandal a couple years back that put them almost out of business. Greed never stops.
The evil me is waiting for the Toshiba fire-sale...

 

Looks like they will be removed from the Tokyo Exchange's first section and demoted to the second section. A sign they can't cover the capital requirements.

Twitter is to communications as haiku is to literature.

 

Noooooooooooo!

-Of course, Toshiba doesn't really mean anything to me beyond the fact that they made a couple of my favorite TPCs; the venerable and super-popular (albeit delicate-screened) Portege M200 which sold zillions of units to the point where you can still find them on eBay today, and the mighty Tecra M4 (which only works if you open it up and perform reconstructive surgery to correct a factory-installed malfunctioning GPU fan which never turns on otherwise).

Nooooooooooo!

But seriously... Toshiba put some excellent design ideas into those two machines. Toshiba was the only company to make a TPC with a screen the same dimensions as a sheet of printer paper, -which is STILL a great idea and STILL incredibly satisfying to work on-. I use one to this day after modern, shiny models from other manufacturers continue to disappoint with idiotic screen formats and/or one-step-forward-two-steps-back stylus tech.

Luckily, I own three used Tecra machines, so I'll be able to salvage the parts necessary to keep at least one of them running for years to come as the TPC market continues to confuse with sub-optimal design and engineering decisions.

RIP Toshiba.

 

Actually, it has been eerily quiet for a few days (murder of Kim Jong-Nam has dominated the news cycle) a sure sign that some sort of salvage operation is in the works. Maybe they'll get some infusion of capital? Pure speculation, though.

Twitter is to communications as haiku is to literature.

 

@Kumabjorn is the Japanese rumour mill saying anything about a possible spin-off of Toshiba's PC wing (in the flavour of VAIO)?

Hell, I'd love for the old Toshiba engineers to have a meetup with the Sony guys!

 

Speculation is for some sort of merger or spin-off between Toshiba, Fujitsu and NEC. They are all hurting, why they should hurt less together is a mystery to me. Historically these forced mergers seldom work out. Clan history is deeply rooted in the Japanese mind and loyalty to the original brand/employer remain. Banking industry went through this process in the nineties and they are still having problems.

Twitter is to communications as haiku is to literature.

 

Well, Lenovo did issue these press releases in 2011 for a NEC joint-venture, and 2016 a Fujitsu joint-venture. It seems only natural that Toshiba is up next...

So is it taboo or something in Japan for a company to admit being acquired by a foreign one? Is that why all these "joint ventures" happen under the guise of share purchase agreements with new shell subsidiaries?

How's the corporate PC landscape in Japan? Does each office location sort of stick with a brand (Fujitsu, VAIO, Panasonic) until the end of time? Or do offices have a mix of PC vendors depending on the workers' preference?

 

Taboo might be a strong word, but if there isn't a foreign entity willing to take over the bureaucrats prefer to work with domestic entities for simple reasons like cultural coherence and common language (they don't speak any English). Domestic companies feel obliged to take part in that process because they don't know when it will be their turn, good will assets will count for a lot in the future.

From the beginning it was BYOC. Middle management in Japan is extremely, let me correct that EXTREMELY, conservative, and they absolutely refuse to learn anything new because their bosses don't want to hear about it. This is the reason Japanese PC makers where so good at developing laptops and portables. People wanted something they could have in their bag and bring to work. So originally it was a mish-mash of personal preferences. It took a long time for corporations to establish IT departments, and those that already existed where dealing with mainframes and simply weren't equipped to deal with PCs. Hence, every single unit, departement or section, had an established IT policy in practice. Some liked NEC, others Toshiba, yet others IBM. It is mainly those stablished after 1990 that has a unified computer policy. When I visit offices I sometimes see good old PC9800 from NEC still up and running on JDOS 3.0, fascinating. Next to it an ashtray that hasn't been emptied since the Bush administration (41).

 

You know, I've heard this being said about the Japanese work culture for the past...like, 20 years! Don't these middle managers ever get old?!

Where's the young blood? The tech-savvy 90s generation that grew up when Akihahara was still an electronics town. Shouldn't they be "middle management" by now?