It has taken IBM Japan Ltd an unconscionable time to add up its 1994 figures, but they are finally out, and show that it made a net profit for the year equivalent to $116.3m in today’s devalued dollars, compared with a loss last time of $205.7m. The Japan subsidiary, which generates about 12% of the global company’s overall business, had gross income – turnover – for the year of $13,415m, up just 3.7% on the previous year. The Japanese unit’s delay in announcing 1994 earnings is due to the time required to comply with local accounting rules, a company spokeswoman told Reuters – they have of course already been consolidated into the IBM Corp figures reported in January and enshrined in tablets of compact disk in the annual report. The subsidiary said the modest increase in turnover was because of steady growth in strategic business areas including personal computers, workstations and systems integration. Restructuring also helped to reduce costs, the company said. For the year now well under way, IBM Japan expects its personal computer shipments to rise to 550,000 machines this year from 350,000 in calendar 1994 because of continued strong demand in the Japanese market, which would raise IBM’s share in Japan’s personal computer market by one or two percentage points to around 11% or 12% – quite an achievement in the circumstances and attributable mainly to the success of the DOS/V standard it has been promoting so energetically: adoption of DOS/V by most of the local competitors of market leader NEC Corp has enabled US companies such as Compaq Computer Corp and Dell Computer Corp to make headway in the market by drastically undercutting the locals. The new liquid crystal display plant being built with Toshiba Corp and due to start operating in the fourth quarter, will double output of panels to 400,000 a month. Exports will fall this year because so many production facilities are being moved off-shore.
