INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS
Saturday, April 10, 2004
Toshiba to move PC notebook unit to China by '05
REUTERS
TOKYO : Japan 's Toshiba plans to move production of the notebook PCs it makes in Asia to its Chinese plant by early next year to cut costs and compete with rivals such as Dell Inc, a Japanese daily said on Friday.
As part of the plan, Toshiba will double annual output capacity at its plant in Hangzhou, China , to three million units and the plant will take over production from factories in Japan and the Philippines, business daily Nihon Keizai Shimbun said.
Hit by aggressive pricing by Hewlett-Packard Co and Dell, Toshiba, the world's third-largest maker of notebook computers, cut the earnings outlook for its PC and PC peripherals division three times in the business year that ended in March.
A Toshiba spokesman said the company was reviewing the production structure of notebook PCs but declined comment on the details of the newspaper report.
Toshiba plans to stop notebook PC production in the Philippines by next March, while boosting output of hard disk drives there, the paper said.
Its Tokyo plant will focus on the development and production of prototype models, it added.
In addition to PC factories in the three Asian countries, the company also runs small PC production facilities in Germany and the United States .
Toshiba , Japan 's second-largest electronics conglomerate, plans to announce a three-year business strategy at 3 pm on Friday.
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