The overseas computer market

Our procedure will be to devote the first half of the discussion to presentations by the panelists on various aspects of the overseas marketing problem, and the second half to questions and participation from the floor. I know many of you are deeply involved in export marketing and the international business aspects of computer sales; in 1965 U.S. computer exports are going to run approximately 400 million dollars. Our imports at the same time are running approximately 60 million dollars. It might be significant to mention that computer exports are up almost 300% from the 1958 figures, only seven years ago. At that time our computer exports totaled only $103 million, as shown in Table 1. TABLE 1. Computers—Exports and Imports {values in millions of dollars) The United States' share of the world computer market is a little difficult to determine. I do have a figure which includes both computing and accounting machines. On this basis the United States has 39% of the total world market in international commerce, followed by West Germany with 14%, the United Kingdom and Italy each with 11%, and France and Sweden with about 9% each. That includes accounting machines, which still comprise a very large part of the market. I suspect that if it were limited to computers alone the U.S. share of the world market would be substantially greater. As to where our computer exports go, I also have some pertinent figures. In 1964 our major cus