Mitsubishi Electric Corp. to Evolve Mobile PC Business in the US and China on a Full Scale While Aiming at Doubling Domestic and International Sales for FY1998

Mitsubishi Electric will launch the distribution of the "Amity", a mobile personal computer, overseas on a full scale early in the new year. It is currently negotiating an agreement to distribute this model both at stores and by mail order with Compu USA (Texas), the US's largest PC volume store, and actually commence selling merchandise at around March 1998 across the nation. At the same time, it will release the "Amity VP", the pen-centric type, in China, targeting local system integrators as well. In addition, it will begin selling the "Pedion", a notebook PC, under its own brand and supplying the same to the US Hewlett Packard on an OEM basis within the US starting next year. With these deals, Mitsubishi Electric will nearly double its estimated unit sales of the two models both within and outside Japan for fiscal 1998 at a single stroke, to around 250 thousand compared with the current term's estimate.

Mitsubishi Electric has begun distributing the "Amity" since this past September through "T. Zone" (California), a retail store subsidiary of Ado Electronic Industrial Co. Ltd. in the US and "Egghead" (Washington), a US-based volume store, limited in area to the West Coast. However, though Egghead owns a nationwide network, it is no more than a mail order service. For this reason, it has decided to sign an agreement for retail sales with Compu USA that has established a retail distribution network, thereby accelerating business activities throughout the nation.

Compu USA, the new partner with which Mitsubishi Electric is due to enter into an agreement, will start distributing retail merchandise on a nationwide scale (at 5 to 6 stores in the initial phase), in addition to distribution by mail order. It will deal in the "Amity" Series and its own brand, the "Pedion."

Meanwhile, Mitsubishi Electric will release the "Amity VP", a pen-centric version that better handles the Chinese language, targeting corporate users, including securities firm (for stock price information providing systems for customers) and real estate firms (for property inquiry systems for sales reps).

Mitsubishi Electric, a latecomer among PC manufacturers, has judged that due to the sluggish Japanese domestic PC market, the growth rate of the flagship, the "Apricot", a desktop PC, will stall out from this point on. Therefore, it will set out to open up a way out through expanding sales of compact mobile PCs that fall into a niche market overseas.