As reported (CI 2889) NEC Corp has decided that while it may not be much fun making personal computers in Japan any more, it’s no fun making them in the US either unless your volumes are huge. The plant NEC is closing, in Northborough, Massachusetts, has been making 380,000 desktop personal computers a year for sale in North America. NEC has decided to contract out the manufacturing of personal computers for the US market and may give the work to Packard Bell Electronics Inc, in which it has 19.9%. NEC will consign production to Packard Bell from July on a trial basis, during which the Sacramento company will produce 20,000 to 30,000 NEC-brand machines a month. NEC’s McDonough, Georgia plant making monitors, and its Fife, Washington notebook computer plant, will continue to operate at current capacity.
