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What happened to the Japanese PC platforms?


(This was originally posted on a social media site; I’ve revised and updated it for my blog.) The other day a friend asked me a pretty …

The other day a friend asked me a pretty interesting question: what happened to all those companies who made those Japanese computer platforms that were never released outside Japan? In the west we often credit Microsoft Office as the killer app, but it wasn’t a major player in Japan where Japanese language-specific word processors were huge in the market for years. It made far more sense for NEC and Fujitsu to bring Windows to their users even if it meant losing the lock-in that their unique OSs and platform-specific software had gotten them.

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