Fujitsu is to buy out Siemens’ stake in the companies’ joint venture, the PC manufacturer Fujitsu Siemens.

Under the terms of the deal, announced on Tuesday, Fujitsu will pay 450m (363m) for Siemens’ 50 percent stake in the business. Siemens will in future concentrate on its energy, industry and healthcare IT businesses.

"Fully integrating Fujitsu Siemens Computers into the Fujitsu Group fits perfectly into our global growth strategy," said Fujitsu president Kuniaki Nozoe in Tuesday’s statement. "We’re inheriting a strong customer base in [Europe, the Middle East and Africa] and [an R&D] capability that can support our global products development not to mention a tremendously talented group of employees who share our values and commitment to grow with our customers as their trusted business partner."

Pending regulatory approval, the buyout will conclude on 1 April, 2009, almost 10 years after Fujitsu and Siemens set up their joint venture in October 1999.

(Full article ‘Fujitsu to buy out Siemens’ stake in joint PC business’)

Mobile computers may carry powerful graphics adapter, but this makes them heavy and bulky, which automatically reduces popularity of such mobile computers. However, ATI, graphics product group of Advanced Micro Devices, Asustek Computer and Fujitsu Siemens plan to enable high-performance graphics processing on notebooks with the help of external graphics cards.

Over a year ago – in early 2007 – Asustek Computer, one of the world’s largest manufacturers of computer components and hardware, unveiled its XG Station which integrated a fully-fledged graphics adapter into an external box that could be connected to a mobile computer using Express Card interface. Even though the product has never made it to the market, the concept itself appeared to be pretty popular.

(Full article ‘AMD, Asustek, Fujitsu Siemens Prepare External Graphics Cards for Laptops’)

Fujitsu Limited, a leading maker of various electronics, on Monday announced its decision to pursue the reorganization of its semiconductor manufacturing business divisions into a new subsidiary scheduled to be established within March 2008. The decision hardly comes as a surprise as numerous Japan-based electronics conglomerates recently announced plans to reorganize their chip manufacturing businesses.

The new subsidiary will enable Fujitsu to accelerate the growth of and intensify its focus on its ASSP (application specific standard product) business in addition to its ASIC (application specific integrated circuits) business, while moving forward with business development offering greater speed and flexibility that are characteristic of the LSI (large scale integration) industry.

Fujitsu also announced that development and mass-production prototyping of its advanced process technologies for the 90nm-generation and beyond will be consolidated to its Mie plant located in Mie prefecture of central Japan.

(Full article ‘Fujitsu to Reorganize Semiconductor Business’)

Microsoft Corp. today released Windows Home Server (WHS) to manufacturing, the final milestone for software that will power several turnkey home servers that OEMs will put on the market in late September and early October.

The move to release to manufacturing (RTM) means that Microsoft has wrapped up WHS and handed it off to its internal distribution teams and hardware partners, said senior product manager Joel Sider. Those OEM partners grew by two today, as Iomega Corp. and Fujitsu-Siemens Computers were added to a list that already included Hewlett-Packard Co., Gateway Inc., LaCie and Medion AG. Details on the Fujitsu-Siemens and Iomega systems were scanty today, but the former will be a 500GB product with Gigabit Ethernet, while the latter will contain up to four hot-swappable drives.

(Full article ‘Microsoft wraps up work on Windows Home Server’)