Uchida Yoko, a trading house that specialises in office equipment, including office computers built by Fujitsu Ltd affiliate PFU Ltd, has launched a new career as a reseller of the new low-priced Compaq Computer Corp personal computers. Looking for customers that are ready to buy several thousands of the personal computers at once, Uchida Yoko has already begun lending sample machines to large insurance companies and auto makers. In order to dispel the lingering impression that American products are not as reliable as Japanese ones, Uchida Yoko will provide service through an affiliate, Uchida Uesco, and hopes to be selling between several hundred and several thousand machines per month from next month. Compaq’s success in Japan could be marred only by reports that it cannot produce enough to meet new demand in Japan – a major industrial company has been unable to get the high-end computer-aided design workstation machine it ordered for around three months now, and hears that the plants are focussed on producing low-cost hardware rather than high-performance models. At the same time, last week Compaq announced two new families – eight models – in its ProSignia series, aiming for the corporate market, in combination with the low-price models announced last October in Japan. Prices have been set at from $5,200. The SystemPro series based on the full 80486 has its own Triflex Architecture, comes with fault-tolerance functions and is priced in Japan at from $14,400.
