IBM is very much a personal computer also-ran in Japan compared with the market leader, and shipments of all members of NEC Corp’s PC-9800 series of personal computers now exceed the 3m mark, according to industry paper Nikkei Sangyou: it took two years for the cumulative installed base to go from 1m to 2m but only one year and three months to go to 3m from 2m; the original 9800 was launched in 1982, and reached 1m sales in March 87, then NEC quickened the pace of new model introductions and there are currently a total of 30 models of 17 types, ranging from desktop to notebook, and 10,000 applications available.
