Hitachi has decided to stop producing home PCs amid sluggish sales and stiff competitions from the leading international manufacturers like HP, Dell, Acer and Lenovo.

The company will end production of the existing Prius models at a plant in Toyokawa in the central Japan prefecture of Aichi, officials said.

However, Hitachi will maintain business-use PC operations, having reached an accord in March this year to receive supplies from US computer giant HP.

The company disclosed that it wants to focus its resources on an all-in-one consumer device that combines the functionality of a PC, Internet appliance, and television.

“We want to develop new computers for use in the broadcasting industry, which is becoming more digitized,” Hitachi spokesman Keisaku Shibatani told Reuters.

The company had been Japan’s eighth-largest PC maker, held about 4.5% of the domestic market with its main PC brand being Prius. Its domestic shipments totaled slightly above 600,000 units in 2006.

Hitachi said it was now scaling back PC production at its factory in Toyokawa, central Japan, to focus on server-based computers for businesses instead.

The firm says it has no plans for layoffs because workers assembling PCs will be shifted to servers and ATMs. And PC technicians will be transferred to segments developing audiovisual equipment and cell phones, Trading Markets writes.

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Entry was posted on Tuesday, October 23rd, 2007 at 6:39 pm under Technology.

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