Lagos — Managing Director of Technology Distribution, TD, Mrs. Chioma Ekeh, last week said that the laptops market would be very active in 2008 predicting that both resellers and end users would have reasons to smile to the banks.

This according to her was the reason the company has limited its partnership deal with Toshiba, to only laptops. She noted that the laptop has taken the center stage as the PC variant that serves all segments of the populace whether at work or at play.

She said that recent developments in mobile technology and growing awareness among educationists that every student needs a laptop to achieve meaningful learning, have also helped to boost the market potentials of the laptop.

Ekeh said that IT penetration has reached a critical point in the history of Nigeria and so the national interest should dictate that all conscious stakeholders in IT industry, concentrate on the provision of quality and affordable IT products to a majority of the people.

She said that the responsibility for a company like Technology Distributions, that is getting set to launch relationship with Toshiba, included the need to shield Nigerians from sub standard products coming from faceless and nameless manufacturers of IT products.

For Mrs. Ekeh, "right from the inception of TD in 1999, the company has won awards for the caliber of manufacturers and the quality of products that we have distributed in this country and our corporate belief is that technology is top of the list of the conditions that can lead to national development".

She recalled that TD was known for distributing only the best even as since inception, the company has driven notable global brands like Compaq, HP, APC, Microsoft, EPSON, Zinox, Microsoft and CISCO, to the number one position in the country.

In the process, the company has won numerous awards from these global brands, the media, professional associations and industry regulatory bodies. According to her, the Toshiba relationship was based on the life long vision to bring only the best to Nigeria.

Toshiba Corporation with its Corporate Head office in Tokyo is a diversified manufacturer and marketer of advanced electronic and electrical products, spanning information and communications equipment and systems, Internet-based solutions and services, electronic components and materials, power systems, industrial and social infrastructure systems, and household appliances.

The company is the world's 9th largest integrated manufacturer of electric and electronic equipment, with some 161,000 employee's worldwide with 364 consolidated subsidiaries worldwide and consolidated annual sales of over US$53 billion.