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Fujitsu Spins Off Its PC and Mobile Divisions (engadget.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Back in February, Sony unloaded the part of its business that built PCs. Now, a year later, competitor Fujitsu is doing the same. The company announced it would be spinning off its PC and mobile business, effective 1 February 2016. Your first reaction was probably, "Fujitsu had a PC and mobile business?" You're not alone, and this is likely why the split is happening. In their press release, they say, "With the ongoing commoditization of ubiquitous products, mainly of PCs and smart phones, it has become increasingly difficult to achieve differentiation, and competition with emerging global vendors has intensified." More simply: they couldn't make a competitive product. Hopefully, this is the start of a trend; the race to zero in the Windows laptop market is finally killing off some of the participants.
As Lenovo bludgeoned ThinkPads and HP's moves eviscerated entire product lines, Fujitsu's spin-off will also reflect a lower quality product over time.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
>Hopefully, this is the start of a trend; the race to zero in the Windows laptop market is finally killing off some of the participants
I agree, pcs are more and more commoditized and it is harder to make a profit, but why is this something to hope for?
Endpoint (i.e. PC) security is abysmal and could be taken in several new directions if there was more research done on open hardware, adding security context to UIs and such. Heck, we don't even have PCs and mobiles that represent keys, certs and signatures as first-class objects.... An MS Excel spreadsheet on a Linux desktop is more likely to be properly represented and handled than is a PGP key (on any OS).
Why not sell people on devices that have on/off switches on all mics and webcams? On wireless transceivers?
There's lots of room for differentiation in this field.
Not just Japan. When I used to work in Spansion - the Flash Memory joint venture of AMD and Fujitsu - the laptops we had from our employer were Fujitsu LifeBooks w/ Athlons inside them. They were a neat product from both our parent companies. Included in the lineup was a bright red 'Ferrari' model, which was awesome to look at. But if you went to, say, Microcenter, there was really little reason to prefer a Fujitsu to a Toshiba or a Dell. I doubt that a spun off company making generic parts will be any more successful
At my last job, the guy who purchased our user level tech was pretty set on Fujitsu laptops. They were significantly more expensive than the alternatives, but every model I used in my 10 years there was feature rich, excellent in build quality, and incredibly reliable. The ultabooks, while not as thin or lightweight as others, still managed to pack 3 or 4 USB ports, a docking station port, a special port for the included external wired NIC, and a full size keyboard. I was pretty disappointed when they decided to switch to the Surface Pro and it's single freaking USB port. As a Sys Admin and fill in network admin (our primary network guy got his undies in a bunch a quit one day), I can't even begin to describe how obnoxious it is to only have 1 USB on your laptop. Need to run to the network closet and diagnose a switch issue? Better bring your surface docking station, power cord, and a small table to setup on... turns out Serial to USB adapters don't play well with a USB hub that's also running a mouse and USB NIC. I actually ended up setting up a RasPi in each switch closet and just left it unplugged until I needed to use it. Fujitsu made great business grade laptops. I can't speak to their mobile devices, but this is a significant loss. I was actually contemplating going with them for the next round of laptop refreshes at my new gig... guess that's not happening. BOOOO! HISSSS!
Maybe you're thinking of chop-shops and the like. Yes, they do exist for cars. And yes, computer components used to be the target of theft. I remember when $1000 486 CPUs in PCs used to be easily removed because they started using ZIF sockets, and a lot of name-brand PCs (Gateway, etc.) had easily-opened cases, so pretty quickly universities and other places where PCs were publicly accessible started having big problems with these chips mysteriously disappearing, because apparently no one ever thought that someone might just pop the top up, lift a level, and swipe a $1000 part that fits in your hand. Of course they started locking cases after that.
These days, however, computers are dirt cheap. You can spend a bunch on some high-end rig, but not many people do, usually only gamers. Laptop theft used to be a big problem too; again, not any more since you can get laptops for dirt cheap. Apple owners might still need to be careful (since their laptops are both very easily distinguished and very overpriced), but for everyone else it just isn't a big factor any more. Laptops and computers just aren't valuable enough any more to support a big black market in stolen goods. You're much more likely to have your phone stolen.
When was the last time you heard about thieves breaking into offices to "taff" RAM? (I'm guessing that's some silly Britishism for "steal".) Probably back when RAM was really expensive, like 10+ years ago. I could totally see that back in the days of RAMBUS memory with the P4; that stuff was ridiculously expensive. These days, why would anyone go to the effort of swiping $20 worth of RAM?