Japanese P Cs: If At First You Falter, Reboot

It has never been easy to crack the U.S. personal-computer market. Cutthroat pricing, long-established brands, and costly sales outlets have sent newcomers packing. Remember Philips, Groupe Bull, Olivetti, and Epson? Those giants came to conquer only to cut and run. So it's no surprise that last year's splashy arrival of Japan's biggest mainframe and consumer electronics companies in the U.S. PC business wasn't one for the record books.

But not for lack of spending. After forking out $30 million on print and TV advertising, Hitachi Ltd. captured just 2% of U.S. notebook sales last year--and it was the best of the bunch. The Sony Corp. name and clout in retail didn't have its usual pull with customers, whose purchases of Sony's slate-gray VAIO computers accounted for less than 1% of home-PC sales during the crucial holiday season. And Fujitsu Ltd., which plunked down $25 million on ads, collected a tiny 1.4% market share in notebooks.