8-26-96, NYP: "A Netscape Bid For the Souls of New Machines." Markoff. Netscape plans on Monday to announce that it has created a software company that will enter an alliance with I.B.M., Oracle and four Japanese consumer electronics giants. The venture, called the Navio Corporation, intends to develop refined software for browsing the Internet and a new OS that Netscape hopes will become a standard means for controlling Internet access and basic operations for a broad range of consumer devices. The four Japanese companies in the alliance -- Sony, Nintendo, Sega and NEC -- are dominant in producing a variety of home entertainment devices, and the expected announcement, analysts said, suggested that the Internet, which until now has largely been a business and educational marketplace, would soon vastly broaden its scope. ----- http://jya.com/navios.txt (8 kb) NAV_ios