FACTBOX: Five facts about Japanese electronics giant Toshiba

(Reuters) - Japan's Toshiba Corp (6502.T) aims to more than triple sales at its lighting operations in 12 years by phasing out incandescent lights and switching to energy-saving LED lights, its president said on Thursday.

Following are five key facts about Toshiba.

* Toshiba traces its history as far back as 1875 when Hisashige Tanaka opened a telegraph equipment factory in Tokyo. Toshiba is now one of Japan's largest companies with about 200,000 employees and a market value of $29 billion.

* Its product achievements include manufacturing Japan's first electric washing machines and refrigerators in 1930, developing Japan's first microwave ovens in 1959, and introducing the world's first laptop personal computer in 1985.

* Toshiba pioneered and led in the 1-megabit dynamic random access memory (DRAM) market in the 1980s, flying high along with Japanese peers Hitachi (6501.T) and NEC (6701.T). But it fell behind Samsung (005930.KS) in capacity expansion and pulled out of PC chips in 2001. It is now the world's No. 2 maker of NAND-type flash memory chips, used in portable music players and digital cameras.

* In February, Toshiba conceded defeat in the high-definition home movie war to the Blu-ray technology backed by Sony Corp (6758.T) and pulled the plug on its HD DVD format. It booked a 108.5 billion yen loss on the pullout in the January-March quarter.

* Toshiba is aiming for a group operating profit of 500 billion yen ($4.75 billion) in the business year to March 2011, more than double the 238 billion yen booked in the year ended March of this year, as it cuts costs, ramps up capacity for semiconductors and seeks nuclear plant orders.

Sources: Reuters, Toshiba's website, Toyo Keizai