Microsoft Corp is going to roll out its Office 97 software suite in Japan this month, hoping that its IME 97 Hiragana-to-Kanji translation program, introduced in November, will help it regain a market where it’s been facing fierce competition in recent months. Hiragana-to-Kanji is critical to success in a market where typists use the simplified […]
Microsoft Corp is going to roll out its Office 97 software suite in Japan this month, hoping that its IME 97 Hiragana-to-Kanji translation program, introduced in November, will help it regain a market where it’s been facing fierce competition in recent months. Hiragana-to-Kanji is critical to success in a market where typists use the simplified Hiragana to enter data but want Kanji output. Microsoft Word, using a predecessor of IME 97, made inroads into the Japanese market until last September when Japan’s hometown favorite word processing vendor Justsystem Inc released Ichitaro 7, which runs on Windows 95 and NT, selling 1.25 million copies its first month out. Justsystem currently claims to be outselling Microsoft nine-to-one Justsystems is now rushing to get Ichitaro 8, currently in its beta test version, out of the door by the end of this month to beat Office 97/IME 97.
