Last week’s MacWorld Expo Tokyo attracted a total of 84,880 people over three days, and a larger number of exhibitors, 187 companies, than last year, indicating the growing strength of the Apple Computer Inc Macintosh line in the Japanese market. It was sponsored by the International Data Group, and the keynote speech at the concurrent conference was given by John Sculley, and Apple Computer KK’s president Shigechika Takeuchi announced that new series of alliances with new channels, Brother Sales and Kokuyo. Apple also announced the Apple Federation concept under which products such as peripherals developed by third parties will be procured under OEM agreements and sold under the Apple brand name. A number of press statements made at the Expo included the announcement of an agreement between Software Ventures Corp of Menlo Park and Mitsui Corp for the sale of the MicroPhone II communications software. Mitsui will be assisted by DataComm Tool and Die, which will provide technical and sales support. MicroPhone II will be made available in a Japanese version for Mac System 7, Windows 3.1 and the NeXT Computer System. Apple also announced a drop in the price of the PowerBook 100 models, in order to stimulate sales in the Japanese market, with the hard disk model dropping around 10% to $2,000. The local subsidiary of Neuron Data Inc, Neuron Data Japan, also announced a Japanese language version of its Open Interface graphical user interface product for the Macintosh. Neuron Data had already released Japanese versions of the product for the Sony Corp News RISC and Sun Microsystems Inc Sparc machines since last August. It costs $18,000 for a development licence. – Anita Byrnes
