Hi, Ibexx and ALL, Article...PC's in Japan converge to WINTEL!
pcweek.com
January 31, 1997 1:45 PM ET
Wintel convergence seen in Japan
By Robert Lemos, Special to PC Week
ÿTOKYO -- The Japanese PC market, long a haven for proprietary standards, is finally uniting behind the Windows/Intel platform, according to a report released yesterday by Dataquest Japan.
In its 1996 PC Market Report, Dataquest Japan released estimates of the number of PCs shipped in calendar year 1996. The bottom line: Two proprietary standards -- NEC and Apple -- lost market share, while the overall Wintel market made significant headway, gaining a 56.8 percent market share in 1996, compared with a 45.8 percent share in 1995.
NEC accounted for the majority of that difference, with an 8 percent drop - from 40 percent to 32 percent -- in the 7.57 million unit market. (NEC's Japanese computers require a significant portion of code to be rewritten for Windows compatibility, a contributing factor to the delayed release of Windows 95 in Japan last year.)
NEC, Fujitsu and IBM Japan retained their aristocratic positions in the Japanese market, with a combined share of almost two-thirds, according to the report.
Apple Japan slipped behind IBM Japan into fourth place. Beset by problems and lower consumer confidence, the company failed to keep up with the overall market; its share fell for the second straight year, this time to 11.0 percent, down from a high of 15.4 percent of the market in 1994.
Both IBM Japan and Fujitsu posted near-60 percent gains in shipments, handily beating the market's 32.7 percent growth and closing the gap between themselves and NEC, which slipped for the third year in a row to 32 percent on shipments of 2.42 million units.
Significant increases were claimed by a number of smaller computer companies. The Wintel "rat pack" of U.S. companies such as Gateway 2000 Inc., Compaq Computer Corp. and Dell Computer Corp. -- as well as new Japanese entries Akia and SOTEC -- increased their market share from 13.7 percent in 1995 to 17.8 percent in 1996, according to the report. To grab market share previously claimed by the Big Three, these smaller companies are resorting to non-traditional channels to open the market.
"Local vendors have the advantage in the Asian markets, particularly the Japanese market," said Dataquest Japan analyst Kotsuya Shiga, who attributes a long history in the computer market to the Big Three's success.
Instead, newcomers have to rely on channels other than retail to deliver their computers to the customer. "In a war of shelf space, a new company cannot win against the Fujitsus and NECs," said one analyst familiar with the market. "Mail order is one of the few places where these new companies can compete."
Mail-order specialist Gateway 2000, for example, gained about 1 percent of the market after being in Japan for just over a year, showing that the traditional Japanese resistance to mail order is being overcome.
______________________________________________________
The asian markets are going to make a significant contribution to Intel's future earnings.
Take Care, Michael |
