Struggling PC Company Toshiba Australia has sacked several PC sales executives weeks after their parent Company said that they were getting out of several PC markets around the world.
Mark Whittard the CEO of Toshiba has not commented on the recent sackings which include the entire Melbourne based sales team. Whittard who last month said that Australia was not one of the markets affected by the parents Companies decision to axe 900 jobs and exit 19 consumer markets around the world.
The decision to cut jobs in Australia comes the same week as Lenovo gets set to launch their assault on the Australian consumer PC market. Later this week Lenovo CEO Yuanqing Yang and Chief Marketing Officer David Roman will host a function in Sydney to outline Lenovo’s consumer strategy for the Australian market.
Last year Toshiba who are struggling to hold onto market share in the consumer PC market was forced to quit the TV market due to poor sales.
Recently Toshiba said the move to axe 19 consumer operations will cut operating profit by $124M.
Toshiba is hoping the move will cut fixed costs by $240 Million compared with the year previous.
Analyst group Gartner revealed in a PC report at the start of the year that a total of 316 million PCs were shipped in 2013 overall, down 10 percent from the same quarter the previous year, with sales equal to 2009’s shipment levels, but at a rate of decline that was the worst on record, the research firm said.
Canada is one of the countries that Toshiba is exiting the consumer PC market.
Asked why, a strong legacy brand such as Toshiba is struggling in the consumer PC market a Toshiba executive said that the consumer business represents only about 10% of Toshiba’s total business as a corporation. “With the category being so highly commoditized in a declining market, it made little sense to continue.”
In 2013, the company announced that it would cut fixed costs in its TV business cut its workforce in half, and integrate overseas TV manufacturing operations by selling a plant in Poland, closing one in China, and focusing in-house production on a facility in Indonesia, among many other strategic moves.
In July, Toshiba confirmed that it would be undergoing further structural reforms to its TV business in response to the “still harsh business environment.”
Last month, Toshiba announced that it would be focusing more on the profitable B2B market.
Toshiba was founded in Tokyo more than a century ago in 1875. Today, the company employs over 200,000 people and has annual sales among all of its divisions, which also include energy & infrastructure, community solutions, and electronic devices and components alongside the aforementioned divisions that surpass US$63 billion.
