Fujitsu 2013 Annual Report Download - page 58

Market Trends
After expanding a modest 3.9% year on
year in 2012, the IT market in the Americas
has picked up slightly and is expected to
grow by 5.3% in 2013. Meanwhile, the U.S.
economy continues to recover gradually on
the back of firm personal consumption,
among other factors. On the other hand,
there are no signs yet that this recovery will
accelerate, and the U.S. unemployment
rate, while declining, remains high.
GRAPH 2
Likewise, the IT services market in the
Americas is expected to grow 4.5% in
2013 after expanding 4.3% year on year
in 2012. This growth is seen as coming
from the cloud computing market, espe-
cially SaaS and private cloud services.
The hardware market, overall, is
expected to see sluggish sales of high
end products, and on the other hand,
growth with products in the lower price
range. The server market is projected to
decline 0.4% overall in 2013, after
having contracted 0.3% year-on-year in
2012. The storage market is projected
to continue firm growth of 3.6%,
although less than the year-on-year
increase of 5.8% recorded in 2012. The
market for conventional PCs is expected
to decline another 3.6% in 2013 after
falling 7.6% in 2012. Sales of communi-
cation devices are projected to expand
briskly by 9.3%, exceeding the 5.6%
growth seen in 2012.
The North American optical transmis-
sion market is expected to expand on the
back of a rise in data traffic accompany-
ing the increasing penetration of cloud
and mobile technologies, as well as
video transmission and distribution. The
rise in traffic is expected to drive invest-
ment in 100 Gpbsbackbonesystems
following on from the 40 Gbps generation.
Initiatives Going Forward
In the Americas, we are working to
expand business scale and improve our
market recognition with Fujitsu America
at the core of business operations. Prog-
ress in this area and major business
deals won in recent years, such as a
major outsourcing contract with Blue
Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina, will
be expanded laterally and leveraged to
win other big business deals. At the
same time, we will strive to increase
market share among small- and
medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Spe-
cifically, we will provide SME customers
with cloud-based IT Management as a
Service (ITMaaS), including our Patja IT
infrastructure management package for
SMEs. In addition, Fujitsu is now con-
structing a Tier III datacenter in the Prov-
ince of Saskatchewan, in the Canadian
Midwest. This first Tier III datacenter will
strengthen our links in the infrastructure
services business in the U.S. and Canada,
and enable provision of a wide-range of
datacenter services to customers in and
outside Canada. In this role, it will con-
tribute to expanding the infrastructure
services business for the North America
as a whole.
In the applications business, we will
accelerate work toward SaaS business
wins for the applications of our partner
companies, including SAP, Oracle, Sales-
force.com and Microsoft. We are raising
the added value of infrastructure ser-
vices, including with cloud business
deals, to promote greater profitability.
In the platform products business, we
are working to expand sales of x86 servers
and the entire range of platform products
through channel sales, and by promoting
cross-selling to our existing customers in
infrastructure services, point of sales
(POS), and self-checkout systems.
We are also aiming to improve profit-
ability by boosting software sales associ-
ated with POS and self-checkout system
services, provided primarily to customers
in the North American distribution and
retail industries.
In business development in emerging
markets, we will continue to promote
services and other businesses in Brazil,
which is still predominantly product-
oriented, and to position that country as a
hub market from which we will drive
business development in other areas of
South America. By building cloud infra-
structure in Brazil for the South American
THE AMERICAS
Explanations for underlined words can be found in the glossary on page 147-148.
056 FUJITSU LIMITED ANNUAL REPORT 2013