The annual survey conducted among mainframe users by Nikkei Computer magazine received responses from 6,758 sites, 40% of the 16,574 sites polled, and the large sample indicated that Fujitsu Ltd was the market leader in terms both of value and number of installed machines – $4,066m and 2,459 machines installed, giving it 25.3% and 29.5% respectively; IBM Japan was second in the value stakes with $3,890m of systems, 24.2%, but only 1,137 machines, indicating the higher per machine value of the IBM mainframes; Hitachi Ltd moved past NEC Corp into third place with $3,585m by value, 22.3%, representing 1,572 machines; NEC Corp had more machines installed, at 1,934, but these represented only 14.1% by value; the next three in order were Nippon Unisys, NCR Japan and Mitsubishi Electric Corp; with all the new top-end machines on the market, the three main Japanese contenders are all looking to upgrade their users and to replace other vendors’ machines, but the survey indicated that in the replacement stakes, the two leaders, Fujitsu and IBM Japan would gain at the expense of the rest.
