Fujitsu Ltd will invest 40 billion yen ($280m) to increase its annual production of hard disk drives by 50% in the year ending March 1999 to 18 million units, according to The Nihon Keizai Shimbun. The company’s aim is to increase its worldwide market share from just under 10% to 15%. Fujitsu said the move is also designed to establish more stable sources of supply for leading PC manufacturers, as research firms project worldwide hard drive shipments are expected to continue growing at a rate of over 15% a year. Fujitsu will boost output of drives for desktop PCs as well as notebook models, and will be upgrading various facilities in Japan, the Philippines and Thailand. Fujitsu said it sold roughly 12 million drives in fiscal 1997.
