Apple Computer Inc. will open a representative office in St. Petersburg by mid-December as part of a plan to double its Russian market share to 5 percent by 1997, a representative for Apple announced Friday.


"Russia is a very important market and the situation here is changing," said Viktoria Pavlova, marketing manager for CIS Ltd. Apple Computer IMC, the computer company's exclusive distributor in Russia. "It used to be people bought cheaper technology from China or the Third World, but now there is a growing interest in high-quality computers and technology [from the West]."


The new office, complete with showroom and technical consultation facilities, will be followed by similar offices in Nizhny Novgorod, Yekaterinburg and Novosibirsk by mid-1996, said Pavlova. Moscow remains the base for the company's Russia operations.


As part of its expansion strategy, Apple will also concentrate on tapping into Russia's emerging market for home and business computers, she said. Since it entered Russia in 1992, the majority of Apple's sales have been in the publishing and advertising sector, followed by educational institutions and government.


The company faces an IBM-shaped barricade, however. Although corporate sales revenue in Russia has doubled to $28 million since 1994, Apple says it holds just 2 percent of the local computer market -- a figure it says should increase to 5 percent over the next two years.


Relying on dealers to sell its products, though, Apple has so far been frustrated by a lack of salespeople in dealer stores who can explain to shoppers how to use a Macintosh, Pavlova said. The firm plans to increase its number of Russian dealers from 120 to 300 by the end of next year and conduct an "aggressive" in-store advertising and sales training campaign, she said.


Apple will start selling lower-cost computers in Russia next year, including in supermarkets, in an effort to grab the attention of the masses, she added.


But staking out Russia's home computer market, which Pavlova characterized as "very, very small," will depend on how fast Russian consumers can be whisked into the Computer Age.


"Computers came to Russia very late," she said. "Whereas in the U.S. people are exposed to computers from childhood, most people here don't know anything about them and are afraid of them."