The apparently innocuous announcement that Hitachi Ltd was putting computer centres in London, New York, San Francisco and Singapore to provide services to subsidiaries of its Japanese customers, and to market and develop mainframe applications (CI No 835) is now being viewed as a far more aggressive move in Japan. It is now reported that Hitachi will be using the bases to market its IBM-compatible mainframes under its own name – and that the first markets to be targeted are the US – where National Advanced Systems is its sole representative, in the UK – NAS and Comparex, and in the emerging nations of south-east Asia. Olivetti Computers now sells Hitachi mainframes only in Italy, but passes some of its quota onto Nixdorf Computer.
