Toshiba reportedly plans to close its R&D center in Taiwan and will lay off about 100 engineers working at the center, according to sources in Taiwan's notebook industry.

As the planned lay-off is scheduled to be executed by the end of March, some local notebook brands and ODMs have begun to raid talent from the R&D center, the sources noted.

Meanwhile, Toshiba has also decided to produce notebooks in-house and will cancel its 2016 notebook orders placed with local ODMs, mainly Pegatron and Compal Electronics, the sources revealed. Toshiba ships about 7-8 million notebooks a year.

Toshiba will also shift the focus of its PC business to the business sector and will promote its consumer notebooks mainly in the US and Japan, indicated the sources.