Toshiba’s Italian channel sales and marketing operation reportedly is considering offering pre-loaded Linux in its Tecra, Satellite, Portege, and Qosmio notebook lines, according to a story published online last week in the Il Sole newspaper.

Luigi Cattaneo, country manager for Toshiba’s Italy Computer Systems Division, reportedly acknowledged that Hewlett-Packard and Acer own more than 50 percent of the Italian Windows laptop computer market, and that one way for his company to move ahead would be to offer pre-installed Linux as an option, the newspaper reported.

Cattaneo said that in order to make headway in the SMB (small- to medium-sized business) market, his company would have to market notebooks in the 500-Euro range, and to do that, a Linux OS would be a requirement, the newspaper reported.

“The corporation is seriously talking about this, and we are evaluating attentively the question,” Cattaneo was quoted as having said. “It is a potential business to which we do not want to close the door.”

Source: Desktop Linux

~LC