Are IBM Corp and Toshiba Corp going to take their flat panel manufacturing joint venture one stage further and combine their notebook computer businesses, thereby gaining a dominant market share? Toshiba’s new president Taizo Nishimuro told the Financial Times that he will be seeking international alliances or closures in areas where the company cannot compete effectively alone – and the only things he identifies as core are basic semiconductor technology, integrated systems – by which he apparently means complex chips, visual communications and power generation. He says he is ready to enter alliances in potentially every business sector. IBM’s ThinkPad family of notebook computers is one of the few areas where the company is winning unstinted admiration these days, but it is not actually very big, and would have much wider visibility if it were much bigger. Toshiba has a name for notebooks, but its early dominance has faded, and while its line is solid, workmanlike and competitive, it lacks the stylish edge of the ThinkPad.
