NEC Corp’s approach to the European computer market has been characterised by all due Japanese caution, and for four or five years, anyone who responded to advertisements for NEC Computers & Communications was told that the company did not actually sell computers here. For the past three years or so, NEC has been marketing its Advanced Personal line with very modest success, but the company now reckons that it has learned the market and is ready for the big pitch. Our Tokyo correspondent reports that NEC plans to triple the number of personal computers sent to Europe to 30,000 within a year or so, from the present 9,000 a year, and in the meantime is wooing software houses and building a European sales organisation. At present, 70% of its European sales are in the UK, France and Germany, and the last is the prime target: it is doing German keyboards and translating software. Local manufacture is also likely.
