Nippon Steel Corp is stepping up its competitiveness in the market for Sun Microsystems workstations bought OEM by bundling both local software and applications imported from the US: products include Super-Tec S1 from the US, and an ASIC design system developed by Nishimura Research Institute of Tokyo in conjunction with other companies; Nippon Steel will also expand its sales offices to includes a branch in Nagoya, the heartland of Japanese industry; the company is also the distributor of the MassComp machines from Concurrent Computer Corp, Tinton Falls, New Jersey, but is perceived to be putting more muscle behind the Sun product line at present; the company sold 300 NS-Suns in the year to March, and is aiming to get 700 away this year, although 70% will go to companies within the Nippon Steel group; there are now seven Japanese companies buying Suns OEM – the other six are Fujitsu Ltd, Toshiba Corp, Oki Electric Industry Corp, Fuji Xerox Corp, Tokyo Electron Corp and CI Techno-Science.
