Teen-Agers Help Start Belated PC Boom in Japan : Technology: Industry is surprised. Country has reputation for making but not using the machines.
Japan has long been known as a country that makes personal computers but does not use them.
That is rapidly changing, though, as Japanese teen-agers are helping to start a PC boom that has taken the industry by surprise.
“It’s hard to pinpoint exactly what is starting the current boom in PC sales, but schoolchildren are definitely playing an important role,” said David Benda, electronics analyst at BZW Securities in Tokyo.
Large discounts on powerful new software and hardware have also boosted PC sales, according to a recently published report by the Yamaichi Research Institute, the research arm of Yamaichi Securities.
“Over the last 18 months, business has certainly been more brisk and there have been a lot more school kids visiting the store,” said a salesman at one of Osaka’s largest PC stores.
Takeyoshi Miyamoto, 16, who was browsing recently in the hardware department of the store, said he first became interested in computers after starting information management classes at school 18 months ago.
“I spend a lot of time looking around computer stores,” he said. “It gives me something to do during the summer holidays because my parents don’t get much time off.”
The report says that thanks to interest among schoolchildren and heavy discounts on powerful and easy-to-use new software and hardware, Japan’s top four makers--NEC Corp., Fujitsu Ltd., Toshiba Corp. and Hitachi Ltd.--are likely to increase PC production sharply in the next two years.
The research institute estimates that there will be an 8% rise in shipments, to 5.3 million units, in the year to March, 1996, and a 23% jump to 6.5 million in the year after that.
However, Benda said officials at one of the four makers were expecting deliveries to rise even more quickly than that. Quoting senior officials, he said one maker expects production to top 5.5 million units this business year and to approach 7 million units next year.
Still, the value of computers delivered will not grow as quickly because of price slashing sparked by aggressive competition from foreign computer giants such as Compaq Computer Corp. that are making inroads into the Japanese market.
Yamaichi Research estimates the value of deliveries will rise to $22.7 billion in the year to March, 1997, up from an estimated $19.8 billion the previous year.
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According to statistics prepared by U.S. research firm Dataquest, Compaq sold more PCs in the year to March than any other maker, shipping 4.8 million to capture 10.3% of the world market.
A Compaq spokeswoman said that in Japan, the company made sales worth $409 million in the year to March, but she would not say how many machines that represents.
Typically, Compaq PCs sell for between $2,272 and $3,408 in Osaka.
Still, although Japan’s PC industry is booming, Benda said that its future is by no means secure.
For years, many Japanese have steered clear of PCs because of a paucity of Japanese-language software. Industry sources estimate there are currently five times as many PC users per capita in the United States as in Japan.
But since software makers two years ago cleared up the problems presented by written Japanese--which has three distinct scripts--Benda said that many people have been replacing their Japanese-language word processors with PCs.
This meant that while computer makers have sold more PCs, their sales of similarly priced word processors have fallen, thus blunting gains in the PC market.
Shopper Takeyoshi Miyamoto said he wonders whether the current boom will last as long as industry analysts expect.
“A lot of my classmates want computers,” Miyamoto said, “but entry-level models still cost around 200,000 yen, and unless they fall to 100,000 yen, I don’t think that many of the kids in my year are going to persuade their parents to buy computers for them.”
