IDG World Expo, part of the International Data Group, Framingham, Massachusetts, sponsored the fourth MacWorld Tokyo at Makuhari Messe outside Tokyo late last month, generating record enthusiasm from the Japanese public – a crowd of 98,748 people attended. Attractions of the show were the previews of the PowerPC running a Japanese System 7 KanjiTalk – the beta test release, demonstrating native PowerPC applications in around 40 booths around the show. The Japanese PowerPC is due to be announced in the second quarter this year in Japan – although rumours put the actual launch date later than that. Also prominent was the announcement of Apple Computer Inc’s full-colour small digital camera, the QuickTake 100 with its matching QuickTake 1.0 video editing software, priced in Japan at $1,120, and the Color Stylewriter Pro, and a 600dpi laser printer the LaserWriter Select, which will be available here in later March, priced at $4,266. Apple is piching for a 20% share of the Japanese personal computer market this year, and judging by the success of MacWorld looks likely to attain its goal. Recent changes in Apple Japan, including the departure of president Takeuchi and his (acting) replacement by John Floisand, president of Apple Pacific were said to be due to cultural and internal differences as well as some lag in sales. However Apple is aggressively pursuing a policy of selling PowerPC-upgradable Macintoshes now, rather than later. Of late, more traditional companies in various fields who have seen their market share or gross sales lagging in the depressed economy are jumping on the Macintosh bandwaggon, including majors such as trading company Mitsubishi Corp and proprietary system maker Uchida Yoko Ltd.
Mitsubishi
Last week, concurrently with MacWorld, Mitsubishi announced a software package for connecting Macintoshes to the Fujitsu Network Architecture networking software which runs on Fujitsu Ltd M-Series mainframes. The software, called FNA ps6680GC, enables Macintoshes to be connected as local network terminals, while another package, FNAps6680SS, connects to the M-Series network as a stand-alone terminal. Mitsubishi Corp also sells a series of SNA software for connection of Macs to IBM Corp mainframes.
