HMM

[David Farber <farber () central cis upenn edu>]

    The November 29 edition of the New York Times has a cover story titled:
"Japanese, in a Painful Recession, Trim Industrial Research Outlays".  Some
excerpts:


        Fujitsu is cutting its R&D budget by 14 percent, $2.5 billion.
        (Though IBM cut by 17%, $1 billion).


        Overall, according to MITI, spending is down about 1.9 percent,
        after a decline of 5.6 percent last year.


        To avoid cutting back research projects or personnel, Japanese
        companies are first invoking economies like restricting travel
        to conferences or delaying purchases of laboratory equipment.


        Many companies are cutting long-term basic research in favor of
        development of products.


        In superconductors, Sumitomo Electric has cut back from 42 to 35
        scientists.  Instead of searching by itself for materials able
        to achieve superconductivity at higher temperatures, it will
        rely on the International Superconductivity Technology Center,
        a consortium largely financed by the Japanese government.


In a related article, same edition of NYT, it is reported that NEC is seeing
its profits from its PC business eroded by steep price cuts spurred by the
invasion of Japan's market by aggresive American companies.  While Compaq
and Dell are still minor players in Japan, they have forced NEC and other
Japanese companies to cut their prices sharply.  Also hurting NEC is that
other Japanese companies are standardizing on IBM compatibility,  buttressed
by Microsoft's Japanese version of Windows, as opposed to NEC's proprietary
system.