NEC bounces IBM out of second place is the headline news in the computer sales figures for the top seven companies manufacturing in Japan for the year to March 31. Fujitsu Ltd remains top of the tree with sales of $7,963m, 83% made domestically; while it was worried about exports, in Japan it had a good year with sales up 6.7%, shipments of the new top-end M780 series of mainframes, and orders from banks implementing the so-called Third Online systems; Fujitsu has now been top for eight consecutive years. NEC Corp replaced IBM Japan in second place with computer sales of $6,887m, of which exports accounted for $1,040m, up 25%, as a result of all those DPS 90s going to Honeywell and Bull, and excellent sales in the personal computer and office automation market. IBM Japan stumbled in third on not strictly comparable figures since they are for the year to December, with $6,275m sales, down 3.9%; $1,682m of that was exports, which were down 8%, and represented the company’s first drop in both earnings and profits since being founded in Japan in 1950. Hitachi was fourth with computer revenues of $5,014m, about $1,002m of that being exports which rose 37.6% due to the expanded shipments to the new Siemens-BASF Comparex company in West Germany. Toshiba, with total sales of $2,435m, also did well, with exports up 50% at $557m, mainly those highly-regarded lap-tops. Propping up the list were Mitsubishi Electric with $1,085m, and Nippon Univac Kaisha with $1,062m.
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