Compaq Computer Corp duly launched its Prolineas in Japan yesterday – at about half the price of comparable local machines and also announced nine models from its Deskpro/i series, also at about half the price of the Japanese manufacturers’ products – We are not here to introduce a price war in Japan, we are here to increase market demand, the company said: NEC Corp’s share price fell on the launch, and has not yet shown it has a strategy to cope with the new challenge, but distribution and service are key, and NEC has 7,000 retail outlets while Compaq has access to only around 600 or 700 and not all display its models; there are also around 15,000 applications compared with 2,000 or so Japanese applications for DOS/V.
