Toshiba’s PC Sales Up

Sales of Toshiba Corp.’s personal-computer line are up dramatically the last three months in part because of a reduction in excess inventories.

The sharp upswing ends a downturn in Toshiba’s PC business that began in the 1997 fourth quarter, said Jeffrey Friederichs, marketing vice president of computer systems at Toshiba America Information Systems Inc. in Irvine.

Toshiba mostly ships laptop computers but recently has begun expanding into desktops and file-storage servers.

Friederichs declined to quantify the amount of increase or to make a comparison with the year-earlier quarter. According to estimates by International Data Corp., a Massachusetts market research firm, Toshiba shipped 637,000 laptops worldwide in the first quarter, a 17% drop from the same period in 1997.

Toshiba shipped about 2.9 million laptops in 1997, making it the industry leader, according to IDC.