let's see what's happening in 1984 on computer chronicles! oh we're going on a field trip

"the country's industrial base seems geared toward high-tech"

"Japanese companies only have about 10% of the world market for home computers. Companies are focusing on components and leaving systems integration to domestic partners.

"The IBM PC is a de-facto standard in the US, but most Japanese machines are not based on that standard. Instead, Japanese companies are struggling to produce special machines for export to the US which are not sold in Japan."

mmmmmmmmmmm NEC

"The difference between the American and Japanese markets can be seen in any computer store - lots of low-cost machines attracting a very young customer base. And the accent is definitely on entertainment software."

"The Japanese market is moving currently from hobbyist to business-oriented. In the US, this already happened.

"In Japan, we try to sell to the home market. But the current software is not sufficient for home use. Gradually, such a market will increase for ten years. We don't have such a home market yet."

"The problem is the software. Japan needs high-quality domestic third-party developers and high-quality retail partners. NEC seems to be waiting for the next generation."

"Selling Japanese software to the American market is very hard. There's no standard for business software or communications software in Japan. My conclusion is that it's impossible to ask Japanese people to speak English to use American computer products."

One new product we're watching is MSX, aimed at the home market, which was designed by the ASCII Corporation guy.

"They're being sold at deep discount. They're a loser's game, like low-end American computers. They are unsuitable for business."

"Memory, disk drives, and graphics are all lacking."

"The Japanese market has been one with many software vendors and many hardware vendors. The goal of MSX is to separate hardware from software."

COMDEX!

Fujitsu has developed Chinese and Thai word processors for the first time. Chinese characters are entered by radical.

But hey, what about digitizing pads for kanji entry? CIC has come up with that.

How about the Ampere WS-1? It's a 68K-based clamshell portable that runs APL! It's 450,000 JPY.

Or an Epson watch computer! Or HP-UX!

But what's really important here is the CD-ROM, displayed by Sony.

"It is a very high-storage read-only system, capable of storing 540MB using audio CD technology. Eventually they will be inexpensive because of that."

Robots!

Let's ask our experts why they think Japanese computers haven't caught on in the US.

This guy says that it's because Japanese is too complicated for a personal computer.

Hitachi's goal is to be the #1 personal computer manufacturer by the year 2000.

yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah

And soon, we'll be visiting EXPO '85!!!!!

News round-up:

HP and Tandy are going to show an AT clone at Comdex in Atlanta.

AT&T is going to start selling its new 32-bit processor, the 3B20C, for use in Unix systems.

Apple has cancelled the Lisa/Macintosh XL. It will concentrate on Macintosh.

(The Tandy clone was the 3000, the first 100% AT-compatible and first 286 system on the market.)

(The W32B20C was a flop.)

(Macs didn’t get color for another 2 years.)