February 8, 2023 - Release Media | Launch Your Press Release Agency

Fujitsu Ltd., a leading Japanese global information and communication technology company, is reportedly divesting its stake in Fujitsu General Ltd.—the unit that manufactures cooling systems.

The declaration came during its quarterly financial announcement in October 2022. The company revealed that it was planning the sale of its stake in non-core affiliates—Fujitsu General, Shinko Electric Industries Co., and FDK.

Fujitsu owned around 50% and 59% stake in Shinko Electric and FDK respectively—as of the end of September 2022.

Not a Partial Divestment

Fujitsu shared plans to sell its entire 42% stake in Fujitsu General Ltd. as the Japanese IT coalition looks to speed up a business overhaul.

Fujitsu General Ltd. shares are worth an estimated ¥140B ($1.1B).

“We have set certain criteria for the sale and aim to sell 100% of the 42% stake,” stated the CEO Takahito Tokita in a recent interview. “We won’t do it halfway.”

Fujitsu Receives Substantial Bids

In line with its divestiture strategy, the company kicked off the auction process after it had found several long-sought customers, such as Bosch. The initial bids for the procurement were submitted by January 20, as decided.

Fujitsu General received around ten bids from high-profile strategic investors and private equity firms. However, the company has not yet narrowed down the list of bidders, said ION Analytics.

Why Is Fujitsu Divesting its Air Conditioning Unit Stack?

The CEO marked the divestiture as a part of the company’s effort to ensure more streamlined operations, reported Bloomberg, a leading financial news website.

Even though the CEO refused to comment on the negotiations, he said the company was “happy to have interested parties.”

Fujitsu is the sixth-largest technology services provider in the world (based on yearly revenue). In its heyday, this Japanese giant manufactured almost everything—from smartphones and laptops to integrated chips.

In order to focus more on IT and communication systems, the IT firm is now divesting non-core affiliates and has already sold off much of its consumer product lineup.

For the fiscal year ending March 31st, 2023, the company predicts its operating profit to reach a staggering ~$3.11B (¥400B)—a jump of 83%.

However, analysts unanimously agreed that the profit will be ~$280B (¥359B). Fujitsu General expects its net sales to rise 37.3% to a total of ~$297.2B (¥390B). It predicts an operating profit of ¥18B for the fiscal year through March this year—an upturn of 113.2% year-on-year.

In the report, the CEO underscored the COVID-19 outbreak and geopolitical pressures regarding Taiwan as the biggest factors making Fujitsu extremely vulnerable.

According to the report, policymakers worldwide are vying to hold sway over the semiconductor technology used for military purposes.

According to RF Globalnet, the USA is pressuring Japan to help clip China’s chip industry. In this circumstance, when Fujitsu is hugely dependent on Taiwan’s semiconductors, Tokito said the divestment would help the company prepare for any emergency.

Navigating Carve-out Challenges to Success

Divestiture is a cross-functional process that takes place on a legal, financial, organisational, and technical level. Even though equity carve-out is a standard strategy of business management among consolidated and dynamic enterprises, the permanent split-off of the IT poses challenges to participants.

Leveraging a high-end IT carve-out consulting service, such as US-based Fission Consulting, can streamline the transaction process and significantly shorten the separation timeline with minimal business disruption.

Wrapping Up

Being at the forefront of hyperconnected business transformation, Fujitsu combines the power of IoT with AI, and network solutions. The aim is to help future-focused companies cope with technological shifts. Regardless of the reasons behind the divestiture, Fujitsu hopes the divestment would help the company optimise business operations while also maintaining the supply chain.

A short while ago, there was a news story about how Google was panicking about ChatGPT, OpenAI’s “chatty” chatbot.

ChatGPT is an AI-powered tool which has access to information on the internet—all the way up till 2021.

Ask a question, get the answer.

Of course, the answer might not be completely accurate or original. It does rely on potentially old information and only what’s available online, after all.

However, what worried Google is the fact that it gives an answer and not a list of pages. A complete, coherent answer.

The Google “Code Red”

Google CEO, Sundar Pichai, declared a “code red” over the threat. And, the company’s founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who had not been involved in the running of the company, were now attending meetings with executives.

The goal was to push out the company’s own AI capabilities to combat the threat of the chatbot.

So, on the 7th of February 2023, Google launched Bard, an AI-powered chatbot that would compete against ChatGPT.

What’s more, Bard has a slight edge over ChatGPT. It can draw information from the internet whilst ChatGPT currently only has the information it was “fed”.

End of story, right?

Nope.

The launch of Bard (and the ever-growing popularity of ChatGPT) leads to the question: Will AI kill SEO?

AI Chatbots and Digital Marketing

Digital marketing, currently, has been focused on search engine optimisation (SEO). This term encompasses all the activities a company undertakes to make its website and web pages rank high on search engines.

Whether by oneself (with the right technical knowledge) or with the help of companies like Geeky Tech, businesses try to make their online presence attractive to both Google and users.

Businesses need to appeal to search engines because they determine if—and where—their web page shows up when users search for a relevant query.

However, chatbots that look up questions and distil an answer from various sources might change the way people search online.

The New Way of Searching

Instead of typing out their search queries and then looking for the answer in the hundreds and thousands of pages that show up, users would be able to use chatbots to give them the answer right off the bat, in natural language.

Suddenly, Google SERPs—Search Engine Result Pages—would no longer be relevant.

Why go through thousands of results when someone can use AI to get a complete answer, which takes a fraction of the time?

Google’s competitor, Bing, is already in the process of integrating ChatGPT into its search page, complete with the chat feature. So, a person can have a conversation with the bot, complete with follow-up questions.

With these AI-powered entities answering user queries like a person would, traditional SERPs might be on their way to becoming obsolete.

So, with no more SEO, what will digital marketers do?

No, they won’t lose their jobs. They’ll simply have to move from SEO to AEO.

What Is AEO?

AEO, or Answer Engine Optimisation, is actually a part of SEO which focuses on providing answers to search queries instead of just making the page optimised for search robots.

It’s not a new concept, either.

AEO became a part of SEO jargon when mobile voice search started gaining traction. People would verbally ask the search engine on their phones a question. And, instead of giving a written answer, which one would need to read, the helpful Google lady would read out the answer.

Since voice search was growing rapidly, and was expected to be the primary way people would search in the near future, AEO became a hot topic.

At the same time, there was also position 0 on the SERPs—the much-coveted featured snippet. Ask a question and find the answer on the search page directly, right at the top.

Trying to “win” that spot required AEO.

Again, it is still a component of SEO, but AEO has a different focus. Instead of appealing to search robots, it aims to answer questions real people are asking.

SEO is all about taking a keyword and optimising a page for it. AEO looks at the whats and whys of the question—the search intent. Then, it tries to answer with that intent in mind, succinctly and knowledgeably.

People-Friendly Content for AEO

So, how does this come back to chatbots and search engines?

If people start using search differently, then, in order to keep up, marketers would need to make sure they are answering people’s questions. It will no longer be enough to satisfy crawlers—they would need to be people-friendly as well.

In conclusion, AI-powered chatbots will change the landscape of search and search engine optimisation.