Japan has been in a recession for a few years, but its largest firms are still economic Titans and there are more plausible factors-like the weak dollar to blame for the recession than the paucity of PCs. The country's miserly IT spending may even have helped it compete. It didn't show in the product then, and it doesn't now. And the differences in technology availability are diminishing. Not only Japanese vendors but also the Western IT giants IBM, Compaq, Dell, Hewlett-Packard and even Apple are doing well in Japanese business markets.
Laptops are especially popular.
Software for handling the notoriously complex kanji character set is now widely available. The head of a large consulting firm's Asian practice told me that his clients realize they are well behind the West in technology per capita and are determined to close the gap-just in case U.S. managers are right. Japanese consumer IT markets in some ways surpass the West. Cell phones are everywhere and cost less to use than in the States. And Tokyo's Akihabara district puts our Circuit City to shame, with every electronic consumer product you can imagine highlighted by strobe lights and loud music.