The Japanese microcomputer industry is rapidly growing and fast

          becoming a highly developed and fiercely competitive field.  By

          1982, sixty-four companies were manufacturing personal

          computers.  Canon, Casio, Seiko(Epson), Fujitsu, Nippon Electric

          Company(NEC), Oki(through BMC), Panasonic, Sharp, Sysems

          Formulate, Toshiba and Hitachi have already marketed

          microcomputers in the States.  Evidently, the Japanese will again

          try to challenge the American computer industry as they did with

          the automobile and electronic industries.





          1.1 MAJOR MANUFACTURERS
          _______________________



            Six major manufacturers were listed in the Japan Electronics
                                                       _____ ___________

          Almanac (1981): Fujitsu, Hitachi, NEC, Toshiba, Mitsubishi
          _______

          Electric and Oki Electric Company.  These companies were noted

          for having experience in developing integrated computer systems

          and software.




                                        - 2 -










            Fujitsu Ltd.  is Japan's largest manufacturer of computers and

          is fourth largest producer of semiconductors.  It devotes most of

          its efforts to computers and data communications, makes printers,

          large hard disk systems, terminals, integrated circuits and many

          other computer related products.  In May 1981, Fujitsu produced

          the world's most powerful general purpose computer, the Facom

          M-382. It is one of the world's largest producers of integrated

          circuits; its 64 K bit dynamic RAM mass production is the world's

          largest.  No one surpasses its efforts with bubble memories,

          which has reached a prototype 1-megabit bubble memory.  However,

          Fujitsu hs yet to establish itself on mass market.


            Hitachi's industries extend from nuclear power equipment,

          chemicals, industrial machinery, consumer electrical appliances

          to computers.  Some of its computer products are the Maxell

          floppy disks, reputable RAMs including 64K-bit chips, the M-280 H

          is among the world's most powerful computers with 32 megabytes of

          main memory, and HITAC E-800, a formidable super computer.  In

          1981, Hitachi was Japans second largest producer of

          semiconductors.  Despite its size and range of technically

          excellent products, Hitachi suffered setbacks in foreign

          markets.  They had supplied Itel in the U.S. with pocessors, and

          Itel's debacle in computers hurt them.  However, Hitachi has

          signed an agreement to supply large processors to a National

          Semiconductor Corporation subsidiary in the U.S. as well as

          Olivetti in Europe.  Disappointed with software supports, Hitachi





                                        - 3 -










          is developing its future microcomputers on the 8086.[1]


            Nippon Electric Company is another giant corporation with

          64,000 employees and $ 5,174,493,000in assets in 1981. Its

          computer products include the PC-800 microcomputer series and the

          Astra microcomputer series.  It also produces mainframes,

          including the NEC System 1000 which can execute 29 million

          instructions per second, has a 64-megebyte main memory, a 256

          K-byte high speed cache memory and excellent integrated circuits

          including NEC's widely used 64K-bit dynamic RAM chips.  In

          addition NEC producs the Spinwriter series of letter quality

          printers, renowned RGB (red-green-blue) color monitors, matrix

          printers, band printers, modems, floppy disks and Winchester hard

          disks.  In 1981 NEC led the world in semiconductors production

          with $805 million sales, seven times more than Texas

          Instruments.  Two of NEC's subsidiaries are now selling the

          PC-8000 series in the U.S.; the NEC Home Electronics USA,

          Personal Computer Division targets the personal computer markets,