The company expects its PC division to break even in the year to March 2011.
The new touch-screen gadget, which also faces potential competition from Sony Corp will not shake up the e-book reader market at this point, because the company has yet to draw up any agreements with content providers.
But executives were keen to emphasize that the Libretto, which they expect to retail for about 120,000 yen ($US1,320) in Japan, compared with $US489 for the larger of Amazon's Kindle devices, or $US499 for the cheapest iPad, offers more than a passive "consumption" experience.
"Apple's iPad is probably creating a new market in terms of consuming information, browsing and reading books," Masahiko Fukakushi, president and CEO of Toshiba's digital products and network unit, told reporters.
"But when it comes to creation or production ... what we have been doing still has a lot of value. We want to continue to do both."
Toshiba is the world's fourth biggest notebook PC vendor after HP, Acer and Dell. Industry-wide shipments of notebook computers jumped 43 percent in the January-March quarter, their highest year-on-year growth in eight years, according to industry tracker Gartner.
Toshiba is targeting global PC shipments of 25 million units in the year to March 2011.
If you like this informative post, then please subscribe to my full RSS Feed.