Fujitsu Computers Ltd, already basking in recent market share reports that have seen it move ahead of Hewlett-Packard Co to claim fourth place in the European PC supplier league, says it now has IBM in its sights and expects to double unit sales in the region over the next 12 months. According to Bryan Taylor, the managing director of Fujitsu Computers Ltd UK, his UK business moved 200,000 units last year and should do half a million easily this year. All of the company’s other country managers in Europe are reporting similarly strong growth, he added.
Fujitsu’s strong recent performance has come from the company’s revamped channel strategy claims Taylor, which has seen the company successfully woo new channel partners since the company separated its PC product arm from the ICL group two years ago.
Fujitsu has also successfully placed more products through retail chains in Germany, which saw unit sales grow 42% last year, and is now buying in research and development from the Japanese parent which had formerly been duplicated in Europe. This has helped the company trim margins without compromising speed to market for new technologies, claimed Taylor.
This factor is beginning to pay dividends in the UK in particular as Fujitsu has picked up distribution agreements with a new generation of web-based PC retailers, including the UK supermarket chains, Tesco and J.Sainsbury; financial services companies, Prudential plc and Egg; and British Telecom which have chosen Fujitsu to supply a limited range of PCs for direct purchase from their web sites. Tesco, which is offering cheap PCs to support its push into online grocery sales has sold 30,000 Fujitsu PCs in just four months. Sainsbury, which began online sales two weeks ago, has sold 4,000. Taylor said that he expects similar figures from the company’s other online sales partners, which have been attracted by Fujitsu’s partnership with the UK order fulfillment company, 911. Between them, Fujitsu and 911 offer a click-to-order, delivery and installation cycle of five days.
A critical facet of Fujitsu’s relationship with the new web-sales sites is the ability to keep prices low. Their margin expectations are tiny, and so is ours, said Taylor, who said Fujitsu’s margin on web sales, after production, order fulfillment and support are single digit. The company now claims to have the lowest net operating expense of any European PC supplier, and equal second best inventory with Compaq. Only Dell’s inventory cycle is shorter.
