Background and Identification
Toshiba was a multinational corporation credited with inventing flash memory and for being one of the biggest producers of consumer electronics in the world. However, due to a series of financial issues and scandals, the company declined and eventually sold 80.1% of their personal computer business to Sharp Corporation in June 2018. Sharp renamed the brand ‘Dynabook’, and purchased the remaining 19.9% of the business two years later on June 30th, 2020. The personal computer business included both Toshiba laptops and netbooks.
The term ‘netbook’ refers to a type of laptop that is very small and lightweight, with fewer features and less processing power than a standard laptop computer. Netbooks were only really popular from 2007 to 2009. As the netbook market developed, these devices got larger, and eventually they were basically indistinguishable from the larger ‘notebook’ class of laptops. Manufacturers tried to put restrictions on the size and capabilities of netbooks to keep them from blending into other categories of computer, but with the rise of the tablet computer in the early 2010s, netbooks offered few advantages over other devices. While a few netbooks were still well-received, they were mostly out of production by 2012.