X

Japanese PC makers stick with IE

Top-tier personal computer makers in Japan will continue preinstalling Microsoft's Internet Explorer with Windows 95.

Brooke Crothers Former CNET contributor
Brooke Crothers writes about mobile computer systems, including laptops, tablets, smartphones: how they define the computing experience and the hardware that makes them tick. He has served as an editor at large at CNET News and a contributing reporter to The New York Times' Bits and Technology sections. His interest in things small began when living in Tokyo in a very small apartment for a very long time.
See full bio
Brooke Crothers
Top-tier personal computer makers in Japan will continue preinstalling Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser with the Windows 95 operating system, according to a report in the Nihon Keizai Shimbun, Japan's largest business daily.

Japan is the second largest computer market in the world, after the U.S.

The announcements come in the wake of a Microsoft announcement stating that it will offer a separate version of Windows 95 that does not come bundled with Internet Explorer software.

Microsoft claims it has not pressured Japanese manufacturers to bundle Explorer with Windows. Nevertheless, the company wants to clarify its marketing practices "in line with a recent U.S. court ruling that ordered an end to the bundling of the browser with Windows 95," according to the newspaper report.

NEC (Japan's largest PC vendor), Fujitsu, Toshiba, Hitachi, and others will continue to honor agreements to bundle Microsoft?s browser with Windows 95, said the newspaper.