Toshiba said it would cut 900 jobs in a restructuring of its PC business that will include an exit from business-to-consumer operations in some regions. The Japanese company will focus on the profitable B2B field, and control volatility in the B2C business by downsizing measures, including withdrawal from certain B2C markets.

In the B2B market, Toshiba expand its wide product range, from workstations to tablet PCs, along with its diversified business-user sales channels, and enhance solutions.

The company will also move ahead with actively promoting the IoT (Internet of Things). By fully utilizing its strengths in PC technologies, including BIOS, security, wireless and high density mounting, Toshiba plans to offer appealing IoT products and services in such areas as social infrastructure, the cloud, healthcare and home appliances. By deploying IoT which interconnects technologies in various business domains, Toshiba will accelerate building a business model that is not dependent on sales of PC hardware alone but that incorporates development of core technologies to deliver enhanced services and solutions.

In the B2C market, Toshiba will transition from the current business model, which is volatile and over-dependent on sales scale and volume, withdraw from unprofitable markets, and optimize sales bases in low profit countries and regions. Through these measures, the company expects to reduce the number of sales bases around the world from 32 to 13 in FY2014.

Looking to the future, Toshiba will concentrate B2C resources to focus on developed countries, where it can also expect to promote collaboration with the B2B business. The company will further cut procurement and distribution costs by narrowing the number of platforms, optimizing global business processes, and scaling back the PC business head office by locating some of its functions outside Japan, measures that will establish a thoroughgoing asset-light management.

The restructuring announced today will reduce the PC business's global workforce by about 900 employees within this fiscal year, more than 20% of the PC business headcount excluding manufacturing, and is expected to cut fixed costs by more than 20 billion yen against FY2013.