Heart-stopping, earth-shaking, foot-stomping audio—from a portable PC? Ten years ago it was what every music-loving laptop owner longed for. Then in 2001, after a dramatic, pedal-to-the-metal effort by Toshiba and audio-equipment legend Harman International, that dream became a reality. When Toshiba engineers slipped a CD into the first Satellite 5000 equipped with harman/kardon® speakers and heard the rich bass tones roar through the room, they had just one word for it: Wow.

It was a technological coup. Through their exclusive partnership, the two companies took a giant step forward, reinventing the laptop as a multimedia hub. For Toshiba, a leader in next-generation PC technology that launched the planet's first mass-market laptop a quarter century ago, the Satellite 5000 was one of many innovations that have transformed the way we work and play—and that continue to do so. "I congratulate Toshiba for its incomparable leadership in the PC world," says Dinesh C. Paliwal, chairman, president and chief executive officer at Harman International. "Toshiba has expanded the role of the laptop and, thus, expanded people's lives. HARMAN and Toshiba share a passion for leading innovation, and I look forward to the sound of continued success." The story behind the creation of the Satellite 5000 speaks volumes about Toshiba's spirit, its passion for innovation and its responsiveness to challenges and opportunities—and also lays the ground for the game-changing innovations the company's launching now and is planning for the future.

Taking the PC to the Next Level

In the 1990s laptops were primarily work tools: "black machines suited for making business documents and presentations," as Yasuhisa Arabiki, senior manager of the Planning Group at Toshiba's Digital Products Management Division, says. He and other Toshiba staffers wanted to take the technology farther. "I always think of creating what I really want to use at home," he says—and two of the things he loved best were music and movies. His dream: to create a portable PC with high-end stereo speakers that delivered theater-quality sound. In 2001 Toshiba made a move that would realize that dream, sealing a deal with U.S.-based Harman International. "The timing was perfect for both companies," says Victor Hirashima, a group manager of the Business Planning Group at Toshiba's Software & Service Division who worked with Arabiki. "Everyone was ready to take on the new challenge."

And it was a challenge. "We were given only nine months to complete the project," says Arabiki. Under a tight deadline and determined to meet the audio maker's rigorous standards, Toshiba engineers pushed themselves to the limit, working through Golden Week, a major holiday, when a Harman International engineer came to Japan—the only chance they'd have to collaborate face to face. One major hurdle: the size issue. "Harman International needed to make speaker boxes as large as possible to reproduce high-quality sound, while Toshiba needed to make the PC as small as possible to meet consumer demands for more compact PCs," says Hironori Ito, a senior manager of Consumer PC Group 1 of Toshiba's PC Product Management Division and an engineer on the project. "We shipped sample machines to Harman International, and they custom-made speakers one by one, even making a pair of different-sized speakers for one machine." The two companies overcame that and every other challenge, from language difficulties to cost constraints.

And they met their deadline. Arabiki remembers the first time he listened to a rock CD on the Satellite: "The sound quality wasn't like anything I'd ever heard on a portable PC. The bass was so rich and overwhelming that the hard disk drive vibrated, and the engineers had to fix it. I was very proud of what we had achieved." The Satellite's sound, paired with its innovative design and impressive functionality, made it a huge hit, and it quickly sold out. "The success of the Satellite 5000 positively affected the mindset of all Toshiba employees," says Ito, who was thrilled when the president of Toshiba America Information Systems, Inc., recognized their efforts with a visit to the Tokyo factory. "We became even more committed to making good products and prouder of selling them."

Next-gen Excellence

Toshiba engineers continue to meet that commitment, growing the company into one of the planet's most influential next-generation PC leaders. "We want to make the products other manufacturers can't make," says Arabiki. "We want to make portable PCs users will love."

And Harman International is still part of that equation. This year several options in the Satellite line come with harman/kardon® speakers, as does the high-performance AV Qosmio notebook. "Toshiba is the only PC manufacturer that uses this premium brand," says Shimpei Kunii, executive vice president of Toshiba Taiwan PC Development Center, who participated in the project from Los Angeles—and whose ongoing enthusiasm for the partnership's work was the seed from which Toshiba's latest netbook PC grew (see sidebar).

Building on the success of the nine-year-long project with Harman International, Toshiba is expanding the audio and video capabilities of portable PCs even further. On the horizon is a new LCD that lets users view three-dimensional images on their PC without wearing dedicated glasses. At Toshiba it's just one of many innovative in-the-works projects. "The most important thing for us is to meet the needs of users—adding more value and functionality," Kunii says. "Offering PCs that suit users' needs will open up the way for a next-generation PC."