The San Francisco Chronicle says that Apple Computer Inc is likely to team up with a Japanese company for future product development and marketing to give Apple easier access to the Japanese market, and suggests that the likely partner is Sony Corp, which already supplies key components for the Macintosh. The report came at the same time that Reuter was putting out one of its think pieces on Apple Japan, quoting analysts as saying that the company faced an uphill struggle to meet its target of $1,000m in annual sales in Japan by the mid-1990s against an estimated $250m in the year to this month, but that is up from $125m last year. John Sculley, in Tokyo this week for the company’s first board meeting to be held in Japan, promised cheaper products for the Japanese market – Apple will introduce a new lower-cost Mac in Japan within the year, he said. Problem is that Apple machines are about 30% more expensive in Japan than comparable ones from NEC Corp and IBM Japan, and to make its machines attractive, Apple must develop a lot more Japanese language software – and the cost of doing that makes analaysts wonder whether Apple can afford to bring out a truly competitive Mac. Apple currently has six AppleCentres in Japan and plans to grow the chain to around 20. Despite its move to get its shares listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, Apple does not need to – or intend to – raise any new money in Japan, Sculley said – the move was simply an image-building exercise. The biggest hope for Apple is that desktop publishing has taken off much later in Japan than in the US and Europe, and the market is now growing at some 55% annually.
