In 1983, Toshiba violated Batumi's regulations and privately exported four five-axis linkage CNC machine tools to the Soviet Union, which directly led to a significant reduction in the underwater navigation noise of the Soviet nuclear submarine after the improved thruster, making the US Navy lose its sonar detection advantage over the Soviet nuclear submarine for the first time.

Last year, the US Government finally found definite evidence of this major sensitive military high-tech smuggling case, which is known as the "Toshiba Incident." Ryuji Hayashi, head of the casting department of Toshiba Group's machinery subsidiary, and Hiroaki Tanimura, director of the machine tool division, were directly arrested, and the former president of the group was also forced to resign. Even Japanese Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakamura had to personally apologize to his American father.

Tanimura took office after the resignation of his former president, and in addition to Toshiba's reputation, an even bigger blow came from the U.S. government's severe retaliatory sanctions against Toshiba.

Toshiba Corp. is one of the world's top manufacturers of industrial machinery, but after its conviction last year, its electromechanical products have been marginalized when they enter the United States, the world's largest consumer market.

In 1939, Tokyo Electric Co., Ltd., a manufacturer of consumer electronics, merged with Shibaura Manufacturing Co., Ltd., a manufacturer of heavy electromechanical products. The name of the new company was taken from the first word of the original two companies, so it was called Toshiba Corporation. Therefore, Toshiba has a strong strength in the field of electromechanical, and also performs well in the field of electronics.

For example, since the late 70s, semiconductor companies in the United States have been beaten by Japanese companies with price wars, and they cannot take care of themselves. Toshiba was one of the pioneers, with its semiconductor division in the early eighties. It successfully defeated another Japanese company, NEC, and became the world's largest semiconductor company.

It's a pity that Toshiba hasn't even sat hot on the throne yet. It was soon kicked down by the rapid rise of Oriental Semiconductor Company like a rocket, relying on a new foundry model.

In addition to doing well in the field of semiconductors. Toshiba, in another time and space, has also been claiming to have produced the world's first commercial laptop. For this reason, it has also fought for years with IBM, another company that claims to have developed the first laptop.

The T1100, which Toshiba calls the world's first laptop, came out in 1985. The T1100 is powered by a 4.77MHz 80C86 processor and a 9-inch monochrome STN LCD display. But it doesn't come with a battery, so it must have an external power supply when in use. And it weighs as much as 4.1 kilograms, and the price is very expensive, so the sales after the launch are actually very average.

In 1986, IBM launched the famous PCconvertible5140. It's the world's first computer to work entirely on a built-in battery. And it started with IBM's PCconvertible5140. The design specifications of future notebooks were established, and the battery became an irreplaceable standard configuration.

Although the trajectory of the entire computer industry has long since become unrecognizable because of the emergence of Li Xuan and the Eastern Group, Toshiba and IBM are still among the first manufacturers to enter the laptop market.

Since the beginning of the 80s, the emerging personal computer industry has shown increasing market potential. Naturally, Toshiba covets this new market. What's more, computers are also one of the most intensive consumer electronics for semiconductor chips, and if Toshiba can occupy a place in the field of personal computers, it can undoubtedly greatly stretch the performance of its semiconductor wafer fabs.

However, the entire personal computer industry has long been completely controlled by Li Xuan, in the face of strong industrial barriers built by the Eastern Group through ERM processors, the East operating system, and the ABC technical standard. As strong as IBM, he had to bow down.

If Japanese manufacturers want to enter the field of desktop computers, they can only accept the exploitation of the Eastern Bloc and become a simple assembly factory with supplied materials, so Toshiba simply chose to find another way. The manufacturing cost of the LCD screen. It accounts for 50% of the total cost of laptop hardware. The LCD industry is precisely Japan's strength, so Toshiba decisively chose to start with laptops.

The NoteBook series of laptops launched by Aikang this time have caused a lot of shock to Toshiba. NoteBook is the same as the previous IBMPCconvertible5140. All are equipped with a built-in battery, which can be used independently without power.

The previous IBMPCconvertible5140 weighed 9.5 kg. The NoteBook launched by Aikang this time is only 3.2 kilograms, and the weight is only one-third of the former. It can be said that NoteBook has made great strides in battery technology. This greatly reduces the overall weight of the computer.

But what Tanimura really cares about is not this, because Aikang does not produce batteries itself, and the batteries configured on the NoteBook are purchased from other companies, and Toshiba can also place orders from the other party. What made Tanimura most unhappy was Aikang's special relationship with the Eastern Group, which allowed it to always get more support in the development of new computers.

And Aikang launched the NoteBook series this time, which made Toshiba feel like a wolf. It stands to reason that the current production scale of laptops is still very small, and with Toshiba's sales in this market alone, Tanimura, the president and CEO, is not worth the effort at all.

However, Tanimura is very optimistic about the future development of notebook computers in the business market, which is likely to be a very important new profit growth point for Toshiba in the future. Therefore, in the face of Aikang's quick entry into the battle, Tanimura Houichi also personally began to participate in the planning.

Since the technical support in the fields of processors and operating systems cannot be compared with Aikang, Toshiba can only work on another core component - liquid crystal display if it wants to keep its notebook computer competitive enough in the market.

What makes Tanimura feel depressed is that the technology accumulation of the Oriental Group in the field of liquid crystal is also very deep. Although the NoteBook on the market this time uses FSTN and DSTN LCD screens, Oriental Group is one of the first companies to make a breakthrough in TFT LCD.

At the Los Angeles Electronics Show in January this year, the Oriental Research Institute exhibited a 14-inch TFT LCD display equipped with more than 1 million thin-film transistors, which immediately caused a huge sensation in the industry. Compared with the previous TN LCD, TFT liquid crystal has obvious technical advantages in color display.

The TFT LCD screen exhibited by the Oriental Research Institute is only 2.7 cm thick, which makes Tanimura see the possibility of entering flat-screen TVs and flat-panel displays in the future.

In addition to the Oriental Research Institute, Sharp also developed a 14-inch TFT LCD display in April this year. Toshiba's competitor NEC in a number of fields has also decided to follow up with the construction of the TFT LCD production line.

This makes Toshiba also face a choice, whether to call or not? You must know that the investment in building a TFT LCD production line is likely to start from 100 million US dollars, and the risk is very large!

After repeated trade-offs, Tanimura was not ready to act alone, but found an ally for Toshiba! )