Hardware Manufacturing
Hardware Manufacturing
Overview
The total size of the Romanian computer hardware market in 1998 was estimated at $150 million. About 45 percent of the market is supplied by local system integrators, several of them having the status of original equipment manufacturers. Imports cover 55 percent of the market, and come mainly from such traditional U.S. suppliers as IBM, Compaq, Hewlett-Packard, and Cisco. The bulk of third-country imports (mainly components) comes from Taiwanese and Singaporean companies. The primary source of laptops is Japan (Canon and Toshiba).
Projections for the 1999-2002 period
estimate that the market will grow by an average of 15
percent annually. Best prospects
include: PC6x86, PC5x86, Pentium II-333MHz, network
interfaces and other communication
interfaces (modems, faxes, etc.), and multimedia
equipment. As a general trend of
the market, brand-name PCs have better prospects than
no-name PCs and hardware which
includes multimedia equipment is preferred.
Romanian demand for computers is very large, given the virtual lack of computerization before the revolution of 1989. Until now, the greatest demand has been from governmental bodies, public corporations, private companies, banks, and some state-owned companies. Domestic production is still modest, although there are Romanian companies which assemble clone computers (e.g. with Packard Bell-USA or FORTE Computers - Singapore) or could become co-production venture partners. The most promising subsectors within the sector are high-performance personal computers, computer peripherals, local area networks, and wide area networks. (9)
Many U.S. computer manufacturers are already represented on the Romanian market. U.S. exports in this sector increased in 1994, in spite of unfavorable customs duties applied to U.S. products following Romanias association with the EU and the EFTA countries and in spite of competition from such suppliers as Germany, Holland, Taiwan, Austria, France, Korea, Singapore and Japan. Romanian demand for computers and peripherals is expected to witness a significant increase over the next years. The increase will be linked to major programs for the modernization of the national railway company SNCFR, the employment and social protection project, power sector rehabilitation and modernization project, telecommunications project for Rom-Telecom, cadastre project, as well as programs for the higher education reform program.
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Hardware Industry before 1989
Before 1989, Romania had one main
computer production facility, the imaginatively-named
Computer Manufacturing Company
(FCE Bucharest), that produced mini/microcomputers for the local market.
There were also a number of producers, including ROMCD (Romanian Control
Data), making computer peripherals (disk drives and printers) for domestic
consumption. ROMCD also had a steady, but
modest, hard currency export market.
The work of these organizations included both product and process modification
for the Romanian market. They were capable of producing industrial process
monitoring and control equipment, which used microelectronic components
and operating
software put together in a customised
way for particular applications. (10)
Despite its isolationism, Romanian IT was largely based on Western technology. However, there was a major technological lag between Romanian-produced hardware and that available in Western nations. The mainstays of Romanian production during the 1980s were minicomputers:
the Felix C, licensed from the
French Iris-50, which was compatible with, and
based on, the Honeywell Bull C11;
the Independent which was compatible
with, and based on, the DEC PDP/11;
the Coral which was likewise
an unlicensed relative of the DEC VAX 11/730.
ROMCD was against all the odds
a joint venture with the US IT firm, Control Data Corporation, making
products under licence, with its main product of the '80s being a 58MB
disk drive licensed in 1977. In all cases, the technology was at
least ten years out of date. While the West was in the middle of the PC
explosion, Romanian computer operators were still running batch jobs using
punch cards, with waiting times of several days at some installations because
of the backlog of runs. Eventually, towards the last part of the
1980s, a combination of reverse engineering, access to components from
South-East Asia, and some local innovation produced the first Romanian
microcomputers:
the Felix M18 and M118 series that ran CP/M, which were then succeeded
by the Felix PC that initially ran a localized MS-DOS variant in 128K of
memory. This represented some degree of "technological catch-up",
being only just over five years behind Western technology. However, Romania
did not really succeed in its goal of
independence. It did not attain
the higher levels of technological capability in hardware production, and
it remained a dependent follower of Western IT trends more than an independent
innovator. Interest in local microcomputers was also limited at a time
when foreign PCs were starting to leak into the country.
Hardware Industry after 1989
Hardware-producing enterprises have
fared badly after 1989. As Western hardware began to become available,
comparisons with Romanian-produced computers and peripherals were unflattering.
Romanian hardware was seen to be slower, lower capacity, harder to maintain,
energy-inefficient, costlier and generally out-of-date. As state funding
for mainstream computers also dried up, demand for
local hardware consequently imploded
and the firms were forced to diversify. Although nominally autonomous,
their survival has relied on state contracts for mass production of items
such as cash registers, electronic scales, and telecommunications equipment.
ROMCD, for example, saw its joint venture lapse and it then merged with
other companies to form Romanian Cable Systems, focusing on production
of telecommunications equipment. (11)
Some of the technological capabilities created prior to 1989 have been retained, but many have not and many skilled staff have also left these enterprises to go overseas, to set up their own company, or to work for the locally-based subsidiaries of IT multinationals.
However, there are a number of private sector systems integration firms, with the larger ones typically employing 10-50 staff. One example is Infocib which won a contract to computerise Bucharest's Victoria Superstore. Infocib analysts worked with client managers and IT staff to develop a set of information systems requirements. Infocib's integration work then consisted of:
purchase of the required hardware
items: Compaq PCs, a network infrastructure,
and point-of-sale terminals;
purchase of a number of retail
packages covering accounts, purchase, inventory,
sales and MIS reporting functions;
installation of hardware systems;
creation of customised links
and a Romanian interface for the software packages;
installation of software systems;
client staff training; and
continuing support.
The work of such firms has tended
to be more software- than hardware-focused, and
they represent an important pool
of Romania's current software capabilities.
