The good name and reputation for quality that Apricot Computers Ltd still enjoys is finally being used by its parent, Mitsubishi Electric Corp, to shoe-horn its way into the home personal computer market in Japan and shortly, into Europe. It’s never been clear why the electronics giant has not been a player in the burgeoning domestic market, but it is now arriving late by re-launching the existing Xen-PC line, which is made at Apricot’s factory in Glenrothes, Scotland, in Japan, targeting home users. Mitsubishi is aiming for high volume sales through retail and mail-order channels. It has previously concentrated mainly on the corporate market with its range of Apricot servers, desktop and notebook machines. The servers and desktops are made by Birmingham-based Apricot, while the notebooks are rebadged as Apricot, but made elsewhere. The range includes the Xen-PCM multimedia machines with quad-speed CD-ROM drives and sound equipment as standard. They will come with either 75MHz or 120MHz Pentiums and cost between about $3,400 and $5,200. The company said that a computer-integrated television will be added by the the end of the year in Japan and Europe next year. There are no plans at present to hit the US home computer market. Keith Corbett, public relations manager at Apricot said, An innovative range of desktops can be expected from Apricot in the next few months, but indicated that the notebooks would not be available in Europe, as these are being released to meet a specific need in the Japanese market. The top-end notebook in the range is the Apricot Note SX. It uses a 90MHz Intel Corp Pentium processor with a 10.4 thin film transistor liquid crystal display, double-speed CD-ROM drive, stereo speakers and microphone as standard. But this being Japan, it sells for around $9,000. Mitsubishi has set a sales target of 100,000 personal computers in the current fiscal year, ending in March 1996, up from the 38,400 it did the previous year.
