The PC-9800 series (Japanese: PC-9800シリーズ, Hepburn: Pī Shī Kyūsen Happyaku Shirīzu), commonly shortened to PC-98 or 98 (キューハチ, Kyū-hachi), is a lineup of Japanese 16-bit and 32-bit personal computers manufactured by NEC from 1982 to 2000. The platform established NEC's dominance in the Japanese personal computer market, and, by 1999, more than 18 million units had been sold. While NEC did not market these specific machines in the West, it sold the NEC APC series, which had similar hardware to early PC-98 models.
The PC-98 was initially released as a business-oriented personal computer which had backward compatibility with the successful PC-8800 series. The range of the series has expanded, and in the 1990s it was used in a variety of industry fields including education and hobbies. NEC succeeded in attracting third-party suppliers and a wide range of users, and the PC-98 dominated the Japanese PC market with more than 60% market share by 1991. IBM clones lacked sufficient graphics capabilities to easily handle Japan's multiple writing systems, in particular kanji with its thousands of characters. In addition, Japanese computer manufacturers marketed personal computers that were based on each proprietary architecture for the domestic market. Global PC manufacturers, with the exception of Apple, had failed to overcome the language barrier, and the Japanese PC market was isolated from the global market.By 1990, average CPUs and graphics capabilities were sufficiently improved. The DOS/V operating system enabled IBM clones to display Japanese text by using a software font only, giving a chance for global PC manufacturers to enter the Japanese PC market. The PC-98 is a non-IBM compatible x86-based computer and is thus capable of running ported (and localized) versions of MS-DOS and Microsoft Windows. However, as Windows spread, software developers no longer had to code their software separately for each specific platform, and the PC-98 became regarded as one of the Windows-based machines like other IBM clones. The PC-98 adopted non-proprietary parts developed for IBM clones to reduce manufacturing costs. Due to the popularity of Windows 95, the demand for the PC-98 on which legacy applications depend had declined. In 1997, NEC abandoned compatibility with the PC-98 and released the PC98-NX series based on the PC System Design Guide.