According to the Nikkei newspaper group’s analysis of sales last year in the mainframe market, reported in the Nikkei Sangyo Shimbun, IBM Japan Ltd slipped 0.2 percentage points to fall behind Fujitsu Ltd in domestic mainframe installed base by value: Fujitsu’s share was 24.5% of the market by value close ly followed by IBM with 24.2%, Hitachi Ltd with 18.1%, up 0.1%, NEC Corp with 16.9% of the market, unchanged from last year, and Nippon Unisys Kaisha with 10.3%, also unchanged from last year; the mainframe market as a whole grew only 6.5%; IBM Japan’s tough year was due to the fact that the big banks had completed implementation of their Third OnLine Systems, and lower investment by securities houses and other financial institutions, resulting in lower sales of large mainframes.
