Toshiba's PC sales jump 50 per cent, tablet assault incoming

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Toshiba announced a jump of 50 per cent in PC sales in the US for the first quarter yesterday, and followed up by promising a major move into the tablet space later in the year.

Jeff Barney, general manager of digital products for Toshiba America, told Reuters that the company sold 1.5 million PC units between January and March, representing a 50 per cent growth on the previous year's figures, when consumer demand was at its lowest following the economic downturn in the latter part of 2008.

The world's fifth largest PC maker managed to outpace the entire market, which grew by a quarter over 2009 levels, with Barney revealing that average selling prices had levelled out during the quarter after a long period of declines in response to softer consumer demand.

Barney said he expected a healthy 35 per cent growth in the US consumer PC market in the six months to come, as well as a more modest single-digit growth in enterprise sales.

With early US sales of the Apple iPad having outstripped market expectations, Barney also announced Toshiba had several tablet PC concepts well into development. “We definitely see a place for the slate, we see there's a market there,” he said, revealing that Toshiba planned to roll out slates on both Windows 7 and Android operating platforms before the end of the year.

Barney added that Toshiba didn't believe the growth of the tablet segment would come at the expense of other markets. “It'll be expansive like netbooks, it won't be cannibalistic,” he predicted.

The company was considering a number of different form factors at this stage, he said, including a dual-screen model running Windows, and a more iPad-esque version with a single 10-inch screen. He added that Windows versions would invariably be priced higher than their Android equivalents, and the latter would have the added bonus of having thousands of apps readily available through the Android Market.

With predictions that the tablet market may be as big as 50 million units by 2014, fellow computing giants HP and Dell are already well on their way to producing tablets of their own in the months to come.

“Media consumption on these slates will be the main user activity,” Barney predicted, adding that Toshiba was already lining up partners to provide content.

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