Despite a disconcerting 85% plunge in net profits to just $94.5m, Fujitsu Ltd, bolstered by the acquisition of ICL Plc is putting rapidly increasing distance between itself and the other contenders for the title world’s second-biggest computer company: some commentators illegitimately eliminate Fujitsu’s semiconductor sales from the total simply because the company sells more of its chip output on the merchant market than do IBM Corp, Digital Equipment Corp and Hewlett-Packard Co, but all of Fujitsu’s $26,640m annual turnover is information technology-related – and the company is now nearly twice the size of the $14,000m-a-year DEC, and well over a third the size of IBM; only a decade ago, IBM was more like 10 times the size of the next biggest computer manufacturer.
