Sun Microsystems Inc remains the top workstation vendor in Japan, according to a new Dataquest report, having led in that market since 1987. Dataquest Japan’s Analysis for the Information Systems Industry declares that Sun Microsystems remained the market leader in Japan during 1991, with 29,800 units shipped and $483m in revenues, up 26% and 22% respectively on the 1990 figures. Sun accounted for approximately 25% of the Japanese market in terms of both units and value of shipments for 1991. The report names Sun, Hewlett-Packard Co and NEC Corp as the three market leaders, together accounting for 47% of units sold and 52% of workstations by value in 1991. NEC is the dark horse, having sailed past Sony Corp, and like Sun, saw its unit share increase, but the Dataquest report says that Hewlett-Packard and Hitachi Ltd as well as Sony, saw either no increase or a reduction. Surprisingly, both unit share and revenue share declined at Hewlett-Packard, with the former dropping 25% in 1991, a situation that will have the company pulling out all the stops to reverse. Since Nippon Sun Microsystems was established in March 1986 as a wholly-owned subsidiary, the installed base of Sun systems in Japan has reached 80,000 with a record 10,000 systems shipped in the company’s third fiscal quarter, which ended in March 1992 achieved with a lot of help from its friends led by Toshiba Corp. The Dataquest numbers demonstrate that between 1986 and 1991, Sun had an 81% compounded annual growth rate in the Japanese workstation market. The sustained growth in this market was a primary factor in the Pacific Rim’s 22% contribution to overall Sun revenues last year, the Mountain View, California Sparcsystems builder declares. As we have noted, the major Japanese companies that have traditionally offered lifetime employment – something enjoyed by only a minority of the population, albeit the most influential sector – are having to rethink that policy in the present climate, and Japanese Victor Co Ltd has announced that it plans to cut its staff by 3,000 through attrition and by laying off part-time workers, following Tuesday’s forecast of loss of $168m parent current loss for the fiscal year to next March, by which time the cuts are to be completed; about 600 full-time employees are expected to leave, some via early retirement, and 300 more will be farmed out to related companies, but the bulk of the cuts will be made by not renewing the contracts of almost all of JVC’s 2,100 part-time workers; a similar fall-off in demand in Europe means JVC will halve its monthly production of 30,000 video recorders in the UK and halve its German video tape production, the company said.
