Apple Computer Inc’s Claris Corp software subsidiary in Mountain View, California has established a wholly-owned Japanese subsidiary to assist in expanding its business in Japan. Claris Japan Inc, established on February 1, is capitalised at $800,000 and Douglas Boake, managing director of Asia-Pacific operations at Claris, has been named president. Claris to date has sold its products solely through System Soft KK, based in Fukuoka, and Claris says that situation will continue; Filemaker and MacWrite are leading products in their fields, both on Mac and under Japanese language Windows. The Japanese market for Claris is second only in size to the US. Initially, the new subsidiary will act as a listening post on the Japanese market to assist in better fulfilling Japanese market requirements. System Soft, which also has exclusive agreement to distribute products from Adobe Systems Inc, Macromind/Paracomp Inc and Symantec Corp, ran into trouble last year at the start of the Japanese economy downturn, reportedly because of the interest burden on borrowings it had made to construct its own building, and in May 1992 another major software distributor, Katena Ltd, came to the rescue and bought a 50% stake.
