The Electronic Music Instrument Division of Matsushita, parent of Panasonic and Technics was successful and profitable when the decision was made. Technics brand (eg for hi-fi too) was to disappear as a marketing exercise leaving Panasonic as the consumer brand name. Consumer keyboards overall are a declining market year on year in total and they just made the calculation that paying expensive and artistically capable engineers to work on other areas of electronics was more profitable than the labour and talent intensive job of producing consumer music instruments.