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PC shipments drop in Japan

Indicators continue to point to a lackluster personal computer market in Japan.

Brooke Crothers Former CNET contributor
Brooke Crothers writes about mobile computer systems, including laptops, tablets, smartphones: how they define the computing experience and the hardware that makes them tick. He has served as an editor at large at CNET News and a contributing reporter to The New York Times' Bits and Technology sections. His interest in things small began when living in Tokyo in a very small apartment for a very long time.
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Brooke Crothers
Indicators continue to point to a lackluster personal computer market in Japan.

Japan?s domestic PC shipments in the July-September period dropped 6 percent from the same period in the previous year to 1.651 million units, the first year-on-year drop since 1992, the Japan Electronic Industry Development Association (JEIDA) reported Thursday.

The last time a decline like this happened was the October-December quarter of 1992, according to the association.

PC shipment value dove 10 percent from the previous year to 394.2 billion yen (about $2.83 billion).

The consumption tax hike in Japan had a particularly deleterious on sales to individuals, according to JEIDA.

In the first half of 1997, sales were down 1 percent to 3.36 million yen, according to JEIDA figures.

But the association does expect shipments to rise about 9 percent in the second half of 1997 to 7.5 million units. Fiscal 1998 even looks better at 8.5 million, a 13 percent year-on-year rise.