Foundation: 1935
Headquarters: Minato Ward, Tokyo
President: Tatsuya Tanaka
Executive Summary: Fujitsu is a Japanese multinational information technology equipment and services company, established in 1935 as a joint venture between Furukawa Electric Co., Ltd. and Germany’s Siemens AG. The venture aimed to reconnect the Kanto region after the catastrophic 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake a decade earlier. The forerunner of today’s Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications opted to switch to new communication systems like those in Europe and the United States. Fuji Electric Co., Ltd. was the original name of the joint venture. In 1935, the new firm created a communications division called Fuji Tsushinki. After World War II, the government called upon Fuji Tsushinki to rebuild the country’s telecommunications systems once again. At the same time, a group of the company’s young engineers started work on a new device: the FACOM100, Japan’s first relay computer. These engineers included Toshio Ikeda, later called “Mr. Computer,” and Hideki Yukawa, who went on to become a Nobel laureate for his contributions to computer technology. In 1954, Ikeda led the development of the FACOM100. Prior to this, computers functioned with vacuum tubes, which easily became dirty and often broke down. In the 1960s, the company’s fifth president, Kanjiro Okada, decided that computers were worth betting the company’s future on, in spite of concerns about the large up-front investments for supply and labor costs. Okada used the phrase “infinite growth” to describe the profits which he believed computers could bring to the company. In 1969, now under the name Fujitsu, the company struck fortune with the FACOM230-60. It was the world’s first integrated circuit-based computer, and it came with a new operating system. Fujitsu’s computers were also the first to offer electronic banking in Japan. In the 1970s, they entered the global market in earnest. Fujitsu’s annual income is in the range of US$40 billion.
