By Sally Watson, 25 August 1999 17:19
NEWS Fujitsu and Siemens have launched a joint assault on the European PC market. The two companies unveiled a global alliance on Tuesday that will see the creation of a new joint European division based in the Netherlands. Both companies were keen to stress that despite the success of direct sales outfits like Dell and Gateway, their channel partners have nothing to fear. Fujitsu Siemens Computers (FSC) will start trading on 1 October, and will be ranked the second-largest computer company in Europe by units, and the third largest by revenues. A spokeswoman for Fujitsu Europe said it is keen to reassure its channel partners that the new joint company will be looking to expand its indirect activities. "Many of our channel partners are worried. There's a lot of marketing talk about direct selling at the moment, but we are not in the business of copying other people's models," she explained. "We are particularly targeting the UK market," she added, "and to do this we will be working much more closely will our large VARs." The deal will bring together over 2,000 European value-added resellers (VARs), distributors and retailers with over 100,000 outlets serving millions of customers. FSC will target both the corporate and consumer markets, and will ship a full range of products from notebooks to mainframes. Rudi Lamprecht, group president, Siemens Information and Communications Products, will head up the company, and Tetsuo Urano, currently president of Fujitsu Computers Europe, will be appointed vice-chairman.
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