Toshiba falls victim to straggling desktop sales

Toshiba has marked the first anniversary of its foray into the UK desktop market after resellers concluded it still has a way to go.

The assessment coincided with the manufacturer's disappointing annual results, which brought in an 89 per cent drop in net profits in the period ended 31 March. Toshiba blamed the ubiquitous Asian crisis, competition within the PC market and weak demand for consumer products (see Stock Watch, page 8).

The indication that the vendor was behind on its expectations of PC sales came to light when it postponed the UK launch of its server range from later this year to 1999 (PC Dealer, 22 April).

At the time, Toshiba product marketing manager Murray McKurlie conceded: 'We need to have a firm desktop market in the UK before we launch servers here.'

One reseller summed up the lacklustre performance to date, saying: 'Toshiba hasn't done as well as it could have, to put it mildly. It struggled with its first range but sold out eventually.'

Trevor Pugsley, hardware marketing manager at Computacenter, added that although the reseller's supply of the initial range of PCs did eventually sell out, the brand equity in the Toshiba name has yet to find its way into the desktop sector.

'Leverage of its brand name within laptops hasn't happened yet. If Toshiba can find a way of tying in the brand name with its PCs, it will do better,' he said.

Duncan Wilkes, Action Computer Supplies chief operating officer, commented: 'You have to measure Toshiba's profit against a long-term plan. It clearly has a long way to go. We did not have large targets for this year and have sold pretty much what we expected to.'

The manufacturer was unavailable for comment.