Hitachi pulls out of tough Japan PC market
updated 08:15 pm EDT, Tue October 23, 2007
Hitachi: No more Japan PCs
Hitachi has announced that it is pulling out of the personal-computer business due to poor sales. The company's Prius-brand PCs were not redesigned for the 2007 holiday buying season, and won't be produced henceforth. The company ranked eighth in Japan's PC market with just under 5 percent market share, representing roughly 600,000 units per year. NEC Corp, Fujitsu Ltd, Dell Inc and Toshiba Corp are all bigger fish in the Japanese pond. The company will continue to produce server-based computers for businesses at its production factory in Toyokawa. Other manufacturers are also struggling in Japan, one of the few markets where PC unit shipments are contracting. For Apple, Japan saw only moderate growth in the company's fiscal fourth quarter, with 72,000 units shipping compared to 62,000 in the year ago quarter. However, Apple's Japan revenue fell 11%.
In mid-January Hitachi introduced the Prius One W, a showcase for the Media Center features of Vista Home Premium that incorporates up to two tuners, digital and analog, for playing and recording live TV. The system was made available at the same time as Windows Vista in Japan on January 30th, shipping in either a basic W35 model with a 3.06GHz Pentium 4 and single tuner or the W37, with 1.8GHz Core 2 Duo and dual tuners.
