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Fujitsu Spins Off Its PC and Mobile Divisions (engadget.com)

Posted by Soulskill on from the decision-could-affect-tens-of-people dept.

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.

7 of 100 comments (clear)

  1. Expect lower quality hardware. by sethstorm · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.
    1. Re:Expect lower quality hardware. by Grishnakh · · Score: 5, Insightful

      If the thieves knew what all is in it, they would steal it just to cannibalize the components.

      No, they wouldn't. Thieves don't care about components, and don't want to spend time trying to sell technical items on Ebay. They want something they can hock quickly, which means something that has a high resale value at consumer places, and that means Apples.

      This is merely the nature of niche-market stuff versus mass-market shiny consumer crap. There's lots of very expensive industrial equipment, for instance, which easily costs 6 or 7 figures, but isn't in much danger of being stolen because thieves wouldn't know what to do with it. Lots of engineering workplaces have oscilloscopes and other test equipment costing high-5 figures or more; how often does that stuff get stolen? Never; they're in much more danger of their $2k Apple laptops getting stolen.

    2. Re:Expect lower quality hardware. by KGIII · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Don't tell macs4all or canadianmacfan this but one of my gifts for my daughter was a new MBP. I know... I know... I did my best to bring them up right but I failed as a parent and she has an iPod, iPad, and several other Apple devices like a desktop, a couple of laptops, and I think she's even got a damned router made by them. Buggered if I know the name but the girl's a fan and yes, yes she has been exposed to Linux. (Her brother uses Debian - sometimes Arch.)

      Anyway, she's not the most gentle creature with her hardware. She works in a pediatric trauma unit and things get jostled around when you're in a hurry. I should probably OTP this next part 'cause I'm never going to live it down but, well, I don't recall her ever actually having anything break - hardware wise. She's... Hmm... 28 now (I'm pretty sure) and has probably been using Apple products for 15 years?

      I've bought a lot of iStuff over the years and she generally wants one of them refreshed every holiday - like it was a new iPad for her birthday. She's not asked for an iPod in a while?

      Ah - she says I'm an ass - she's 27. She also says, "They're great Dad, you should get one." I did once. She absconded with it on a visit. My two kids are getting my girlfriend drunk. 'Tis the first time they've met. But, I digress...

      So, as much as I like to poke the rather crazy and overly defensive iFans... The hardware seems to hold up pretty well. I know that it holds up very well at a small community's elementary school. Oh - the screens break on iPods but I'm now told they still work even if they are, "Mashed to shit." The kid swears like a sailor. So, while it's anecdotal, there's quite a bit of data in that anecdote. From what I observe, the hardware holds up just fine.

      Well, I don't usually drink but I'm gonna go have a rum and coke with the kids. Any posts beyond this point and it wasn't me - it was someone using my UID while I was away from the computer. (That's my lie, I'll tell it any way I want.) Merry festivities and goodnight to all unless I shamble back in. I imagine two drinks will serve quite nicely.

      --
      "So long and thanks for all the fish."
    3. Re:Expect lower quality hardware. by hairyfeet · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Can we PLEASE stop posting yet another "PC is dying" story when its absolute horseshit? Gather round childrens, and let an old greybeard explain a few things that many seem to not know, especially retards that work in the press...

      This is the most important fact that you need to know regarding PCs and sales mmkay? From 1993 to 2007 there was a bubble, no different than the dotbomb or the "houses will always go up" real estate bubble, this was NOT THE NORMAL STATE and was caused by two factors, 1.- Rapid advances in die shrinking technology, and 2.- A focus on single core computing. Now before 1993? You saw what we have now, slow and steady turnover with moderate and acceptable growth. Problem is, just as we saw too many bad companies (remember petfood online? Or CueCat?) that based their entire business model on "on the Internet" being enough to make them rich so too did you see many during the PC bubble base their whole business around infinite growth, like the bubble would never burst.

      "So what about PCs in 2015, oh wise old one? And what about mobile?" I hear you ask. Its very simple young childrens, once the PC went to multicore they performance bubble burst and they went from "barely good enough for a year or two" to "insanely overpowered and good for a decade" which frankly was the default state before 1993. Before then programs didn't need a new PC every other year just to run and now? Can you name something mainstream that won't run just fine on a first gen C2Q or Phenom I X4? Hell the majority of people who aren't gaming are quite happy with a 10 year old C2D or Athlon X2 and even the gamers get along just fine on the second gen C2Q and Phenom II X4s and X6s, and those are 7 year old chips. PCs have simply gone back to being appliances that you replace when they die just like they were before the bubble when I was supporting 8 year old IBMs and Commodores locally.

      Finally as for mobile? I'm gonna really piss off the fanboys but here goes mobile is in their own bubble which is about to burst so its not even gonna get half the run that PCs did in their bubble, why? Because ARM doesn't scale, it blows its power budget once you get beyond a certain speed, which is why we are now up to quads and octocores being the norm instead of climbing MHz like in the PC world. Also battery tech has been stagnant for more than a decade so adding more cores and more speed? Just gives you a device with a 15 minute battery life. I'm already starting to see this, talking to the brothers that own the phone shop down the road they are seeing more and more older phones being brought in for repair because people see no reason to upgrade as they are happy with their iPhone 4 or Galaxy II. They are also seeing a big uptick in the $100-$150 phones because nowadays that gets you a quad core with 8MP camera and a decently sized touchscreen and that is what Joe Average cares about so more and more are seeing now reason to buy $600+ phones. This goes double for tablets, which even Apple is having trouble getting folks to buy the latest iPad because people are happy with the previous model. This is also ignoring the rotting elephant in the room which is many tablets are ending up in sock drawers because the users find mobile software lacking compared to their laptops. I swear I must get dozens trying to sell me tablets really cheap each year because they just can't find a use for the things which isn't better served by their laptops, I had the same problem which is why I gave my 10 inch quad tablet to a nephew.

      So no worries childrens, PCs aren't going anywhere, its simply going back to normal where you have 2 or 3 really big companies selling the boxes and parts and everybody just replaces when they die. Even the mom & pop shops that have any sense won't be going anywhere, I'm staying swamped with HTPCs, Home networking, and home theater setups and I'm predicting with all the cord cutting and everything being online that is gonna be a really big growth market for PCs in the coming years.

      Now if you'll excuse me I have new games that are calling, Happy Holidays!

      --
      ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
  2. Hopefully by Noah+Haders · · Score: 4, Insightful

    >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?

    1. Re:Hopefully by tlhIngan · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Maybe a fan of the Apple/MS Surface/Lumia model? That the OEMs aren't really adding any value and you could just cut the middle man. Because from what I understand that's mainly what they do these days, they take hardware from AMD/nVidia/Intel + various others for screen, touchpad etc., software mainly from Microsoft and outsource the assembly to Foxconn-style assemblers and the support to call centers somewhere. It would probably be pretty bad for Linux users, not sure it'd be all that bad for Windows users. The Surface line seems to be getting pretty good reviews and sell well...

      But the OEMs are what make PCs, well, PCs.

      They are the ones that created (for better or worse) the immense diversity in PCs.

      For an example, look at Apple. Everytime Apple releases a new Mac, people complain - too expensive, or a PC is cheaper, or they don't have X, or they don't sell a $250 laptop, etc. etc. etc.

      Well, that's what OEMs are for - Apple simply picks and chooses the markets they want to sell to. Other OEMs find their own markets. And these days, the results are clear computing wise - we've got more diversity in computing now than ever before - I mean, Windows can be had on a PC costing $100 (tablet or "desktop" compute stick). This is unheard of.

      Yes, for a time the market got stuck - and we were stuck with shitty $500 laptops with 1366x768 screens and nothing to fulfill the high end market. Except Apple who was making a killing selling $1000+ laptops that no OEM wanted to touch and offering high-res screens and GPUs and all t hat. Then Intel formed the Ultrabook market to entice OEMs to produce MacBook Air competitors. Which dragged OEMs into the premium market as well.

      OEMs added value by creating computers that fit their target demographic. Sure sometimes people optimize too well and you hit a local minima (like desktops and laptops being almost all budget and crap), but a push away and now you have OEMs producing higher margin higher end PCs and competing against Apple.

      Heck, remember the netbook craze that completely died away because of tablets? It's sorta making a comeback because you can get really cheap computing devices. And heck, my $100 Windows tablet runs the latest Windows and runs software written for a time when it couldn't be imagined that a computer for $100 was possible. Heck, most of the technologies that power the tablet weren't even thought of.

  3. Best business class laptop I've used by n0creativity · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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!