APPLE PLANS SUB-NOTEBOOK-SIZE COMPUTER TO MARKET IN JAPAN.

Byline: Michael Zielenziger Knight-Ridder Tribune News Wire

Apple Computer Inc., battling to regain sales momentum in a crucial overseas market, is planning a small, sub-notebook-size personal computer designed especially for Japanese users.

Marco Landi, executive vice president and chief operations officer of Apple, said the still-unnamed product will be built in cooperation with IBM-Japan. But it will carry the Apple name and use Macintosh software. Officials said it will be the first time Apple builds a product specifically for Japanese customers.

``It's a very specific, very focused product, conceived for a specific market need,'' Landi told a news briefing here. The new sub-notebook should be offered to customers beginning in the first quarter of 1997, he said.

A joint Apple-IBM machine was first announced by Apple's chairman and chief executive, Gilbert F. Amelio, at the company's Worldwide Developer's Conference in May. Landi and other officials here added several details to what nonetheless remains a fairly vague description of the new model.

They said the machine will use a PowerPC chip co-developed by Apple, International Business Machines Corp. and Motorola Inc., and will run on Apple's operating system. It will be about half the size of today's Macintosh Powerbooks but have a usable screen and keyboard.

Such downsized products are often popular in Japan, where crowded cities, crammed subways and small houses put space at a premium.

Though the Apple machine would be built with Japanese customers in mind, officials did not rule out the possibility that the sub-notebook computer, if successful, might eventually be distributed in other markets including the United States.

Reminded of problems in past joint ventures with IBM, such as the Kaleida and Taligent software projects, Landi said ``Apple will have total ownership'' of the new products. ``IBM will be doing the engineering for miniaturization of the design,'' he said. ``Apple will introduce the product, and it will have Apple's name.''

Landi and Satjiv Chahil, senior vice president of corporate marketing, appeared at a news briefing here to quell lingering concerns about the company's future in Japan and to publicly introduce Tetsuya Shiga as the new chief executive of Apple Japan. Shiga, who came to Apple a year ago, is a 20-year veteran of Digital Equipment Corp.

Once among the pre-eminent computer sellers in Japan, Apple has seen its market share sliced in recent years by aggressive sales campaigns by competitors, notably Compaq Computer Corp. and Dell Computer Corp., and harsh price-cutting by Japanese computer makers. In addition, Microsoft has pushed aggressively to sell its Windows 95 operating system in Japan.