VAIO, Toshiba and Fujitsu are merging their PC business: Report

Some of the top Japanese tech companies such as VAIO, Toshiba and Fujitsu are merging their PC businesses, to create a 'significant rival' to Lenovo, which has been Japan's biggest PC maker.According to a report by Bloomberg, Vaio expects to strike an agreement to combine with Toshiba’s and Fujitsu’s PC divisions by the end of March, said Hidemi Moue, chief executive officer of Japan Industrial Partners, the buyout fund that now controls the former arm of Sony.At the moment, the top three PC makers in the market are HP, Dell and Lenovo, so any collaboration between the smaller companies could prove to be a great competition. VAIO is said to have the biggest stake in the merged company, which can help the trio save on research and development and scale production, Hidemi Moue said."The PC market is shrinking, which means there are merits in working together to make the most of research, production volumes and marketing channels. We can do it with minimal cannibalization," he added.A recent report points out that worldwide PC shipments totaled 75.7 million units in the fourth quarter of 2015, a 8.3 percent decline from the fourth quarter of 2014, according to preliminary results by Gartner. For the year, 2015 PC shipments totaled 288.7 million units, an 8 percent decline from 2014.