Life has not been easy for Siemens Data Systems France; after having acquired 51.7% of Intertechnique Informatique, IN2, for UKP3.6m from Intertechnique last May, the French subsidiary of the Munich-based group must sort out the troubled French busienss and manage the absorption of Nixdorf Computer France, reports 01 Informatique. Siemens France formed IN2 Groupe Siemens from IN2 and the microcomputing company Leanord, acquired in November 1987. IN2 Groupe Siemens will continue to offer its Pick systems and personal computers to the French market. To succeed, the group must bring the computing expertise of the German manufacturer to France, but this will not be entirely achieved until September 1990. One of the first decisions of the managing director of Siemens France, Christian Fayard, was to change the fiscal year-end to September 30 to match that of the Munich parent, from December 30. And last year was difficult one for the company with the figures for the nine months to September 30 showing a loss of UKP12.5m for a turnover of UKP70m. According to the group, this was due to the change in fiscal year, since like most French computer companies, IN2 normally does a third of its business in the final quarter as customers use up their budgets for the year. But this only partially explains the loss as the consolidated turnover of the company to December 31 1989 was UKP106.4m, down from UKP109.5m the previous year, a drop of 2.9%. Fayard believes this fall was attributable to the slow market, the outlay from the restructuring of subsidiaries abroad and legal proceedings in conjunction with its activities in France. For 1990 he hopes for a growth of 10% with only slightly less negative results. With the unification of IN2-Leanord and Siemens, Fayard sees thing looking up. The turnover of IN2 Groupe Siemens is made up of 40% from Leanord’s personal computers, 60% from IN2’s systems, 80% of which run Pick, although it is now dabbling in Unix. The company hopes to balance this with more Unix systems by launching three RISC-based Unix machines based on the MIPS Computer Systems RISC this month. The hope is that the new products will stop IN2 letting the side down – according to research company International Data Corp, Siemens held 11% of the European Unix market in 1988. The new plans do not fully address the competition implicit in the fact that Siemens sells its own personal computers in France in competition with Leanord. For public consumption, Fayard is reassuring, saying that the three companies are complementary as Siemens saw 85% of its turnover from large systems whilst 85% of Nixdorf’s came from the sale of medium range computers; presently IN2 systems are mainly used in government and those of Nixdorf are used by financial institutions. The acquisition of Nixdorf will consitute a challenge for Siemens. In France it is too soon to predict the future entity of Siemens-Nixdorf until the Kartel Office makes its decision. If the Nixdorf deal goes ahead, IN2 Groupe Siemens will be a player in France with their combined businesses forecast to amount to $530m this year.
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