Fujitsu Siemens Computers (FSC) today blamed the weak US dollar and strong Euro for a five per cent sales tumble in its 2007 fiscal year.

The firm’s CEO Bernd Bischoff also admitted a change in business strategy had contributed to FSC’s somewhat gloomy results.

Revenues fell 4.9 per cent to €6.6bn for the year ended 31 March 2008, though pre-tax profit was up 15 per cent to €105m from €91m in 2006.

Bischoff, in a conference call this morning, outlined the reasons behind the painful sales decline, admitting that the company needed to focus on delivering a “better product mix” to its customers.

The firm was last year forced to abandon its struggling TVs and PDAs biz because of flagging sales.

He also said that the consumer arm of the FSC biz had felt the impact of a “very strong competitive environment” and credit crunch woes.

The firm, which punts most of its product range including storage and servers to EMEA business customers, said in a statement:

“The consumer market in Europe has been a battleground with prices driven down substantially.

“Fujitsu Siemens Computers will in 2008 launch a new strategy: a complete new design language for our consumer range, raising the bar for competitors in terms of design and increasing the company’s brand-value in the consumer market. In addition we will approach the end customers with a targeted and clearly focussed approach.”

Bischoff said that, despite the sales decline, the firm’s 2008 outlook remained positive and that FSC hopes to see close to five per cent growth in the first half of this year, but he also admitted that “the business isn’t growing as well as we all expected”. ®

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