Fujitsu Ltd claims to have shipped over 500 copies of its EShell expert system development shell – 260 to 270 of them the personal computer version, a healthy 230 to 240 the mainframe version: as of June last year, 60% of sales were to mainframe users, but since then sales of the personal computer version have risen sharply to overtake the mainframe version; users in manufacturing, trying to reduce costs and improve productivity have taken 54% of total, followed by the academic world with 15%, government with 8.9%, and the power and distribution industries most of the rest; in terms of applications, medical and fault diagnosis were in first place, with 43.2%, manufacturing and other planning with 22.2%, and design applications with 18.8%.
