A rather chastened Nixdorf Computer AG faced the press for its traditional Hanover Fair opening day presentation yesterday – and the profit (or loss) figures for 1988 won’t be out until next month. The most painful news is that orders, at $2,803m at current exchange rates, were up only 1% on the figure for a year ago – and the company declined to say how orders had been going in the first couple of months of the current year. As regards the split of its business, Nixdorf says its proprietary machines accounted for 75% of last year’s turnover of $2,906m, with Unix systems making up 15% and MS-DOS the 10% balance. In terms of market sector, 34% of sales were with small and medium-sized businesses, 29% with banks, 18% with large accounts, 11% in the retail and distribution sector and 8% with public authorities. Within that lot, just 2% of total business was done through third parties.
