The Japanese still have a reputation for being incapable of writing software that will be commercially viable in the US and Europe, and indeed software vendors have not made much impact on the US market in general software areas – hardware exports to the US are booming, but in software, the flow is almost entirely the other way. However, writes our Tokyo correspondent Anita Byrnes, in some niche fields such as image processing software technology, the Japanese are said to be almost as competitive as their US counterparts. For example, Japanese company Dynaware Inc has begun marketing construction design drawing software and map information display software with reasonable success. So far the number of firms marketing in the US is small, but it includes Stella Software Inc, Dynaware, Koei Ltd and Kyodai Software Marketing Inc, the last established by 12 Japanese game software firms and the US Software firm Broderbund (CI No 987). Other software houses with US subsidiaries or US local offices, include Nikko Communications, HiTecs and Infotec (PC suppliers in Japan), Hudson and ASCII (which set up ASCII of America based in Dallas, Texas in April this year). Toyo Information Systems, one of the larger software houses and distributor of Brains expert system development tool, also announced last month establishment of its first overseas subsidiary in Los Angeles, capitalised at $1m, with an initial staff of 10.
