The accounting scandal at the Japanese giant exposes a cut-throat battle in the dwindling desktop computer sectorLosing your chief executive is wrong enough. But for Toshiba,which has just admitted to a billion-dollar inflation of its profits since 2008, the news could get worse. In the wake of the resignation of Hisao Tanaka last week, or it has restated historical profits and as a result may contain to shut or sell its PC business,where sales contain been sagging over the past five years, and which was one source of the overstatement.
The losses there could contain been piling up for some time. And few would be surprised by Toshiba’s likely exit from PCs, or which contain become a shrinking business increasingly dominated by a handful of players that extract economies of scale and all the available profits. “The PC market in recent quarters has been a massacre,” says Tim Coulling, senior analyst at tech consultancy Canalys. “Typical mainstream PC makers expect low single-digit percent operating margins. It’s razor-thin. whether you get to the low-cost machines, and then they’re scrabbling for dollars on products.”Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com