Dynabook Inc.

Dynabook Inc. (Dynabook株式会社, Dainabukku Kabushiki-gaisha), stylized dynabook, is a Japanese personal computer manufacturer based in Kōtō, Tokyo, owned by Sharp Corporation; it was previously part of, and branded overseas as, Toshiba, until 2018. The Dynabook name had already been used by Toshiba in the Japanese market since 1989 for laptop products.

Under Toshiba, it notably launched the Toshiba T1100 in 1985, cited as the first ever commercial laptop PC. The company was a major manufacturer of PCs until a decline in fortunes led to Toshiba selling the business to Sharp in 2018, with new products since rebranded to Dynabook worldwide.

The company's origins date back to the 1950s as a maker of typewriters called Kawasaki Typewriter Co., Ltd., which in 1958 was bought by Tokyo Shibaura Electric Co., Ltd. (later Toshiba Corporation), and the business changed its name to Toshiba Typewriter Co., Ltd. In 1968, the name changed to Toshiba Business Machine Co.

Toshiba Corporation established Toshiba Business Computers Co. in 1977, which was merged with Toshiba Business Machines in 1984 with the result company named Toshiba Information Systems Corporation. In April 2016, control of the PC business was transferred to a sales company targeting domestic corporations by means of a company split at Toshiba Corporation, the resulting entity named Toshiba Client Solutions Co., Ltd..

In 2018, Toshiba Corporation was in the midst of an accounting scandal, and was under pressure to cut costs; Toshiba Client Solutions Co., Ltd. (TCS), the personal computer division, became 80.1% owned by Sharp Corporation, in turn majority-owned by Foxconn; Sharp paid $36 million for the shares. TCS then changed its corporate name to Dynabook, Inc. It marked Sharp Corporation's return to the PC market having last marketed the Mebius in Japan in 2010, and previously also the Actius and WideNote series globally. Sharp exercised a call option on the remaining 19.9% of the shares on June 30, 2020, making Dynabook wholly owned by Sharp in August 2020, and indicated plans for Dynabook to have an initial public offering in 2020 or 2021.

As of 2019^[update], Dynabook Inc. had 162.9 billion yen (US$1.5 billion) in annual sales and 2,680 employees. In 2024 the company had 1,867 employees and 8.55 billion yen in capital.

Toshiba's history with computers date back to the 1950s. Toshiba worked with researchers at the University of Tokyo and manufactured a vacuum-tube computer called TAC, containing 7,000 tubes and 3,000 diodes. Then in the 1960s, the company developed and released TOSBAC (TOshiba Scientific and Business Automatic Computer) mainframes, including the first with its own operating system released in 1964. This OS was called TOPS-1, based on a Fortran monitor. They also partnered with the General Electric Company of the United States. In 1981, Toshiba released the first in a line of home computers under the Pasopia name, which run on a BASIC based operating system. The original model was also sold in the United States as the Toshiba T100. Toshiba Pasopia IQ was a separate line that was MSX compatible.

In 1985, Toshiba released the Toshiba T1100, an 8-bit IBM PC compatible, which is claimed by them to be the first ever mass-market laptop computer. The company launched the Toshiba T3100 in 1986, which was 16-bit; its Japanese variant the Toshiba J-3100 was the first 16-bit PC in Japan. 1987 saw the launch of Toshiba T1000.