Toshiba

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billion Yen (Fiscal year ended March 31, 2006)</td></tr><tr><th style="text-align:right; padding-right:0.75em;">Employees</th><td>165,000 (Consolidated, as of March 31, 2005)</td></tr><tr><th style="text-align:right; padding-right:0.75em;">Slogan</th><td>Committed to People, Committed to the Future. TOSHIBA</td></tr><tr><th style="text-align:right; padding-right:0.75em;">Website</th><td>Toshiba Worldwide</td></tr>

Image:Toshiba Corporation at night.jpg Image:Toshiba sales 2005.png Toshiba Corporation (東芝株式会社, Tōshiba Kabushiki-gaisha ^?) (TYO: 6502 ) is a multinational high technology electrical and electronics manufacturing firm, headquartered in Tokyo, Japan. It is the 7th largest^{[citation needed]} integrated manufacturer of electric and electronic equipment in the world.

As a chip maker, Toshiba Semiconductors is among the Worldwide Top 20 Semiconductor Sales Leaders.

[edit] History

Toshiba was founded by the merging of two companies in 1939.

The first company, Tanaka Seizosho (Tanaka Engineering Works), was Japan's first manufacturer of telegraph equipment and was established by Hisashige Tanaka in 1875. In 1904, the company name was changed to Shibaura Seisakusho (Shibaura Engineering Works). Through the first part of the 20th century, Shibaura Engineering Works became a major manufacturer of heavy electrical machinery as Japan, modernized during the Meiji Era, became a world industrial power.

The second company, originally named Hakunetsusha, was established in 1890 and was Japan's first producer of incandescent electrical lamps. The company diversified into the manufacture of other consumer products, and in 1899 it was renamed Tokyo Denki (Tokyo Electric).

The merger in 1939 of Shibaura Seisakusho and Tokyo Denki created a new company called Tokyo Shibaura Denki. It was soon nicknamed Toshiba, but it wasn't until 1984 that the company was officially renamed Toshiba Corporation.

The group expanded strongly, both by internal growth and by acquisitions, buying heavy engineering and primary industry firms in the 1940s and 1950s and then spinning off subsidiaries in the 1970s and beyond, groups created include Toshiba EMI (1960), Toshiba Electrical Equipment (1974), Toshiba Chemical (1974), Toshiba Lighting and Technology (1989), Toshiba America Information Systems (1989) and Toshiba Carrier Corporation (1999).

The company was responsible for a number of Japanese firsts, including radar (1942), the TAC digital computer (1954), transistor television and microwave oven (1959), color video phone (1971), Japanese word processor (1978), MRI system (1982), laptop personal computer (1986), NAND EEPROM (1991), DVD (1995), the Libretto sub-notebook personal computer (1996), and HD-DVD (2005).

In 1987, the company was accused of illegally selling CNC milling machines used to produce very quiet submarine propellers to the Soviet Union in violation of the CoCom agreement. The incident put a strain on relations between the United States and Japan and resulted in the arrest and prosecution of two senior executives, as well as the imposition of sanctions on the company by both countries.

In 2001, Toshiba signed a contract with Orion Electric, one of the world's largest OEM consumer video electronic makers and suppliers, to manufacture and supply finished consumer TV and video products for Toshiba to meet the increasing demand for the North American market.

In December 2004, Toshiba quietly announced it would discontinue manufacturing traditional cathode ray tube (CRT) televisions. In 2006, Toshiba terminates production on plasma TVs. Toshiba quickly switched to Orion as the supplier and maker of Toshiba-branded CRT-based TVs and plasma TVs. However, to ensure its future competitiveness in the flat-panel digital television and display market, Toshiba has made a considerable investment in a new kind of display technology called SED.

Before World War II, Toshiba was a member of the Mitsui Group zaibatsu. Today Toshiba is a member of the Mitsui keiretsu (a set of companies with interlocking business relationships and shareholdings), and still has preferential arrangements with Mitsui Bank and the other members of the keiretsu. Membership in a keiretsu traditionally meant loyalty, both corporate and private, to other members of the keiretsu or allied keiretsu. This loyalty could extend as far as the beer that workers would consume, which in Toshiba's case was Kirin.

In July 2005 BNFL confirmed it planned to sell Westinghouse, then estimated to be worth $1.8bn (£1bn). [1] However the bid attracted interest from several companies including Toshiba, General Electric and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and when the Financial Times reported on January 23, 2006 that Toshiba had won the bid, it valued the company's offer at $5bn (£2.8bn). The bid surprised many industry experts who questioned the wisdom of selling one of the world's largest producers of nuclear reactors shortly before the market for nuclear power is expected to grow substantially; China, the United States and the United Kingdom are all expected to invest heavily in nuclear power. [2] The acquisition of Westinghouse for $5.4bn was completed on October 17, 2006, with Toshiba obtaining a 77% share, and partners The Shaw Group a 20% share and Ishikawajima-Harima Heavy Industries Co. Ltd. a 3% share.

In 2005, the Better Business Bureau[3] listed Toshiba's repair depot for notebook computers in it's top ten list of businesses with most unanswered and unresolved complaints.

As a chip maker, Toshiba Semiconductors is a major player : During the eighties, it was one the two largest semiconductor companies (with NEC). During the nineties and up to now, Toshiba Semiconductors was almost always among the Top 5. In 2005, Toshiba Semiconductors is number 4, behind Intel, Samsung and Texas Instruments, but before STMicroelectronics.</Br> For more information, refer to the Worldwide Top 20 Semiconductor Market Share Ranking Year by Year.

[edit] Innovation and highlights

Toshiba has created a perpendicular recording 1.8 inch disc that can store 80GB.
Toshiba's brand familiarity in the United Kingdom was considerably boosted in 1980 by their now famous Blueprint Man set of adverts. This consisted of a distinctive angular cartoon man, similar in shape to a crash test dummy, drawn in blueprint and wandering around the company's blueprints, examining them and explaining why Toshiba products are superior. The adverts have been revived a number of times; in the first set, the virtues of Toshiba Hi-Fi equipment were extolled in a song parody of Alexei Sayle's "Ello, John, Got A New Motor?". The song parody has evolved over the years to apply to different items: from 'like your hi-fi system' to 'flatter, squarer, tube'.

[edit] See also

• Toshio Doko
• Toshiba DynaSheet
• Flash memory
  • SmartMedia
  • xD-Picture Card
• Digital audio player
  • Gigabeat
• List of digital camera brands

[edit] External links

• Toshiba Worldwide portal
• Toshiba Company Profile and News Archive
• Linux on Toshiba laptops (User experiences)
• Linux on Toshiba laptops
• Gigabeat Mp3 Player By Toshiba
• Toshiba laptop news
• Summary of 1987 submarine technology scandal
• Japanese electronics industry

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