Something is definitely up between ICL and Fujitsu Ltd and one area of closer collaboration seems likely to be Unix: although Fujitsu fabricates 25MHz and 20MHz versions of the Sparc, it doesn’t yet have a Sparc-based machine in its product line, which suggests that it may be planning to take the ICL Unicorn Sparc machines OEM; it has clear ambitions to get into the European systems business in a big way but at this stage in the game, there is little point in trying to Europeanise its proprietary IBM-like but not IBM-compatible mid-range computers; a first step to a closer alliance on the continent could well be a merger of Fujitsu Espana and ICL Espana – Fujitsu has the stronger presence on the ground in Spain but ICL has a much wider range of appropriate products and software.
