Toshiba may spin off or sell computer business

Toshiba Corp may form a different company for its personal-computer business or sell off the unit, Barron's reported, citing analysts, including Merrill Lynch & Co's Hiroshi Yoshihara.The profit margin for Tokyo-based Toshiba's PC business is shrinking in the face of competition from Dell Inc and Hewlett-Packard Co, Barron's said.It noted that profits at Toshiba increasingly are provided by so-called computer peripherals like hard drives and devices that create DVDs and CDs.Toshiba could spin off the PC division as a separate company, sell it, or have a Taiwanese company like Compal Electronics Inc. make the computers, the weekly newspaper said, citing analysts, including Yoshihara and Fumiaki Sato of Deutsche Securities. Source: Taipei Times