Delving beyond the headline 10.5% increase in turnover for IBM Japan to $8,300m on which profits fell 4% to $1,225m – explained away by president Shiina as the result of investment for growth, and depreciation costs, it turns out that 3090 sales were up 10%, sales of the AS/400 rose 20% and sales of the PS/55 Japanese versions of the PS/2 rose 30% – and software business also grew 30%, which is a lot better performance than the company achieved elsewhere; the company says that demand for networked implementations was particularly strong in the retail and distribution sectors; as for the $2,271m exports, most of this came from the disk drives manufactured at the Fujisawa plant, notably the 3.5 drives that are made there for the world market – the company says it turned out over 5m and that the current output of 10,000 a day is the highest in the world; for the current year, IBM Japan sees growth of around 10%.
