Toshiba Roll-Out

Toshiba, which has dominated the portable computer market for years and entered the home PC business in 1996, last week rolled out its latest entry--a computer designed for the corporate market.

The move is just the latest piece of the Irvine-based company’s strategy to gain footholds in all areas of the PC business.

Toshiba plans to sell the new line of PCs, dubbed Equium, to small- to medium-sized businesses for the first 18 to 24 months. “It’s going to take us that long to develop the track record that the Fortune 500 companies are looking for,” said Elizabeth Marks, commercial desktop product manager.

But unlike other new entrants in the commercial PC market in recent years, Toshiba already has relationships with many large companies that use its popular portable computers. The new Equium computers are priced from $1,899 to $3,499, not including the cost of a monitor.