Toshiba Says It Will Begin Producing Desktop Computers at Irvine Facility : SCIENCE / TECHNOLOGY

Toshiba America, which has enjoyed considerable success in the portable personal computer market, now wants a piece of the desktop market.

Toshiba’s Irvine-based computer division said it will begin marketing in December the first in a line of desktop PCs. The company’s first offering will be a high-performance machine, the T8500, which will be targeted at corporate users.

The T8500 will be assembled at Toshiba’s manufacturing plant in Irvine. Tom Sherrard, director of PC marketing, said Toshiba may increase local employment slightly to handle the assembly operation. He said he isn’t sure how many workers will be hired.

Toshiba hopes to repeat the success it had when it introduced its first portable--or laptop--computer for the U.S. market in November, 1985. Various market surveys have shown Toshiba to be one of the two largest sellers of laptops, with Zenith Data Systems as the nearest challenger.

“As we’ve become dominant in the laptop market, we’ve had a lot of requests from resellers and customers of our laptops asking us to offer desktop machines,” Sherrard said. “Our intention is to introduce more non-portable products.”

But Toshiba may find success harder to come by in desktop computers than it did in laptops. There were few producers of laptops when Toshiba entered that market, whereas the desktop field is already crowded.

“But there are relatively few long-term, stable companies selling desktop PCs,” Sherrard said. Unlike Toshiba, the Japanese electronics giant, some PC makers are relatively young companies, and some of those companies have stumbled financially, he said.

One of the biggest challenges facing companies entering the PC business has been lining up computer retail chains and other distributors to sell their products.

But Toshiba has already established a strong network of retail outlets for its portable computers and hopes to persuade many of those dealers to also carry its desktop machines, Sherrard said.

Toshiba said the T8500 will be the first in “an emerging family of IBM-compatible desktop systems” that the company will market in the United States.

The new Toshiba machine will retail for $7,799.