THE 30 YEAR OLD START UP
The majority stake acquisition of the Toshiba hardware business by Sharpe has brought a new name to the market. Nick Offin explains why bringing his dynabook brand to the established market may not be such a bad idea.
You know Toshiba? Japanese brand, makes laptops, printers amongst other devices. That’s the one. Well in case you didn’t know they’re not known as Toshiba anymore.
That’s right, dynabook, the new name for Toshiba hardware, has hit the market following the 80 percent purchase from Sharp and they are coming to the UK with a bang.
“That deal was finalised back in October last year” said Nick Offin, head of sales, marketing and operations at dynabook Northern Europe, “the thinking behind that acquisition is Sharp wanted to have a client business that sits alongside their AV and managed print service business that, in the UK and across Europe, they're probably more widely known for.”
If you’ve operated in the Japanese market recently, the name dynabook will not be a new to you. Present for the past 30 years, the hardware brand has become a regular there.
However, those that have a boarder that looks over the Atlantic may not be so familiar but Offin says that, despite the Toshiba brand resonance in developed market, the lack of brand awareness is being seen as a fresh start.
“dynabook has been in existence for about 30 years in terms of its brand and its name and if you would have gone to Japan, you would have seen how prevalent they are.
The thinking was, ‘it's a new beginning, a new start’, notwithstanding the fact that Toshiba has a brand residence in Europe, and the rest of the world.
I use the phrase, ‘it's like a 30-year-old start-up.’ We're a start-up with 30 years of pedigree in terms of engineering, R&D excellence around the client devices. If we’d have just stuck with Toshiba, we might not be able to get the message that there's a new impetus to the business.
Offin also added that the new brand distances the computing division from some of the unsavoury stories about Toshiba in the energy business.
“We’re putting behind us some of the negative connotations that were around Toshiba, which came out, not so much from the PC business, but from the energy business.
We had that nuclear piece that came out of us, which has some knock on effects in terms of the cheaper branding. So for us now, it's a new beginning a new slate and therefore a new brand seemed obvious.”
Speaking earlier this year Offin said that, once the dynabook brand gains some momentum in the market, its priority is to explore some of the emerging technologies, as well as trying to embrace the established mobile market.
“Security is a hot topic for CIOs, they're very hung up on security for obvious reasons, even more so now with GDPR. Mobile zero client plays well into that as its the ultimate in terms of security, but it's also on a mobile device.”
NICK OFFIN - HEAD OF SALES, MARKETING & OPERATIONS, DYNABOOK
“In the first phase you'll start to see the first dynabook branded devices arriving in market between the end of this month [August] and early October.
That starts a transition in terms of the branding, but also the start to the transition in terms of us filling out our mobile product range. So, from a classical laptop/mobile device family we will start formulating a fuller product portfolio.
It’s fair to say that we've been very focused on the high end over the last two years in terms of ultralight, ultrathin devices, and we're not moving away from that. We've got some great products coming in terms of re-establishing that thought leadership with the high-end, but we’re also bringing mid-range and updated mid-range products to market which starts this year.
Then we'll focus on re-establishing ourselves with our entry product range, we are successful there within schools and education, for example, and SMB.”
Offin added that Toshiba’s mobile zero client security solution will still run following the rebranding.
“This is the next level down in terms of ultra-security, it's a mobile zero client and we've been able to do that because we are still in control of our own bios.
We don't use third-party bios in our devices which has been quite unique for us in terms of the market, right and it's quite a good security message.
“The thinking was, ‘it's a new beginning, a new start’, notwithstanding the fact that Toshiba has a brand residence in Europe, and the rest of the world.”
Security is a hot topic for CIOs, they're very hung up on security for obvious reasons, even more so now with GDPR. Mobile zero client plays well into that as its the ultimate in terms of security, but it's also on a mobile device.”
Under the dynabook guise the technology manufacturer is also looking to explore possibilities in augmented reality, the internet of things and edge computing to name but a few with Offin describing the AR product as a “good opportunity” to bring a “slightly different” product to the HoloLens that is currently establishing itself.
Overall there are plans to revamp the partner programme with the vendor consulting with resellers as dynabook drives towards a more partner-lead model.
“We're sort of re-establishing a lot of relationships that we've had historically over the years and might have gone away from us because we didn't have the full range line up of products and solutions.
We used to have a massive network into schools, education, further education, SMB, and it's fair to say now that we are re-establishing those connections and driving that business forward.
So our message to the partners is that we're very interested in partnering because we want a 100 percent partnering business.”