Fujitsu confirms European PC exit

Manufacturer to move towards datacentres, hybrid cloud and platform services

A slump in PC sales is forcing Japanese technology giant Fujitsu to move away from PC and peripherals , which will be discontinued in Europe next April, towards hardware for datacentres, hybrid cloud infrastructure and data-driven platform services.

This will also be the focus for Fujitsu partners in the future. Server and storage systems, on the other hand, will continue to play a role at the firm, the firm confirmed to sister publication CRN DE. Maintenance contracts will be fulfilled and spare parts for clients should still be available five years after April 2024.

There is no timeline for the planned withdrawal from the PC segment, and it is also not yet clear whether and how many employees will have to leave Fujitsu Group as part of the discontinuation of the client business in Europe.

Phase-out of German PC production in Augsburg

Fujitsu's exit from the European PC business does not come as a surprise. Up until 2018 the company was one of few international PC manufacturers to maintain a European business.

The plant was located in Augsburg, and Fujitsu had long held on to its production site in Germany, even throughout several years of decline in the PC market. In 2018, Fujitsu announced the closure of the Augsburg site, which affected 1,500 employees directly and 300 indirectly at other Fujitsu facilities in Germany.

Some distributors have been taking steps to prepare for a potential Fujitsu exit in recent years. The brand's largest distributor in Europe, Friedrichshafen-based Bytec, added Lenovo to its portfolio two years earlier under company founder Matthias Bodry, who died in 2017.

"It was very important for us to have a second pillar in the hardware portfolio alongside Fujitsu," said Bodry's successor Reinhold Egenter at the time.