From February 1st, Fujitsu plans to spin off its PC (Company Split A) and phone businesses (Company Split B) as separate operations. The PC operation will be called “Fujitsu Client Computing Ltd”, while the phone company will be known as “Fujitsu Connected Technologies Ltd”.
Analyst Comment
This split will have relatively little impact immediately on the businesses in the US and Europe, where Fujitsu does not have businesses in mobile devices.
Early in December, there were some press rumours about Fujitsu merging its PC business with Toshiba’s struggling notebook business, possibly pulling in the Sony Vaio spin-off. Nikkei suggested that this could happen as quickly as April 2016, and a separate Fujitsu PC business would make this significantly easier. Nikkei reckoned that the three companies have about 6% of the global notebook business between them (just less than Apple), with different regional strengths in the US (Toshiba), Japan (all three companies) and Fujitsu (Europe). The deal would make the combined company the biggest in Japan, where Nikkei reports that Fujitsu is second largest and Toshiba is third. There’s some logic in such a deal, but the challenge might be getting the three companies to integrate their design and manufacturing groups. (BR)
