IBM Japan Ltd is to collaborate with Hitachi Ltd, Justsystem Corp and major home electric appliance retailer Kojima Co to market its ViaVoice voice recognition PC software. As a first step, the four firms will cooperate in commercialization of personal computers and software products for the October 22 release of the ViaVoice Millennium, the latest version in the ViaVoice series, according to an IBM statement.

IBM Japan will retail ViaVoice Pro Millennium for 18,000 yen ($170), while the version designed mainly for word processing will be sold for 9,800 yen ($94). It is aiming at annual sales of a million copies.

Justsystem will begin selling a Japanese version of the program, Voice Ichitaro 10 e-Talk, for 28,000 yen ($267) while Kojima will develop an English-language study software product jointly with IBM Japan for release next spring. The software will enable users to check how comprehensible their pronunciation is to native speakers.

Hitachi is to market a new PC, the Flora 220MP, which comes bundled with ViaVoice as well as software to read handwriting.