The 9800 personal computer family from Japan’s NEC Corp is now so dominant in the local market – it is similar to but not compatible with the IBM Personal – that other companies are paying NEC the doubtful compliment of cloning the machine: Seiko Epson Co and Sharp Corp already offer printers, floppy disk drives and screens for the machine, and now each plans to announce NEC-9800-compatible processors in May Business Show; the NEC family has now sold 1m units, but there are several fairly distinct models as NEC has striven to make the 9800 a moving target, but 80% of sales are accounted for by the mid-range F2, VM2 and VX2 models, and Epson and Sharp have decided to copy the VM2.
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