Korea Telecom Ltd and Samsung Electronics Co Ltd are to help modernise Madagascar’s telephone system, and will buy stakes in a state company being set up by Madagascar: they will install and run 25,000 telephone lines, 1,000 cellular channels and 1,000 paging lines; the partners have committed to invest $50m over the next 10 years. – o – Microsoft Corp is now shipping an updated calculator for Windows to fix the bug that caused simple subtraction errors: you can get it on-line from Microsoft or CompuServe.
Honeywell Inc expects to improve earnings 12% to 16% this year: We believe we’re at or near the end of the down cycle in space and aviation, and in 1995 will begin reaping the benefits of our cost reduction and productivity improvement initiatives, as well as our investments in new technologies the firm said.
Lexington, Massachusetts-based Raytheon Co has merged its three government divisions into a single $4,000m entity to be called the Raytheon Electronic Systems Division, which combines its Missile Systems Division in Bedford, Massachusetts, its Equipment Division in Marlborough, Massachusetts, and its Electromagnetic Systems Division, in Goleta, California: the company is looking to the new structure to strengthen its ability to reduce costs to compete better in the global defence marketplace and to diversify its defence technology further into commercial products.
Atlanta-based National Data Corp has acquired Learned-Mahn, a US-wide provider of software and services to health-care and financial institutions, for an undisclosed sum: Boise, Idaho-based Learned-Mahn provides electronic health-care claims and remittance services to hospitals and sells financial services software to institutions.
Malawi’s state Post & Telecommunications Corp has signed a $7.5m agreement with Hughes Network Systems Inc to install a cellular phone system, starting in Blantyre.
AST Research Inc launched the Ascentia 810N notebook using Cyrix Corp’s Cx486DX2/66 processor with Level One write-back cache; it has the largest viewing area for any value notebook with 10.4 DS-STN colour display and runs for up to six hours when the removable floppy drive is replaced with a second battery bay; it starts at $2,500.
Symbol Technologies Inc has a $5m five-year contract to supply portable computer terminals and wireless communications systems to Canada’s Department of National Defense under a subcontract with SHL Systemhouse Inc, which is managing a $150m five-year deal to upgrade the Canadian Forces supply system. – o – Taiwan’s President Group is to invest $4m to $8m in Shanghai for its President Technology Inc subsidiary, to manufacture 100,000 monitors a month from September; the company currently makes 50,000 monitors a month in Taiwan; President is the company that bought the Taiwanese manufacturing subsidiary of Wang Laboratories Inc and WICL Inc, its marketing agent, which in 1993 obtained the rights to use the Wang trade mark and make computer products for the Wang, will also be involved in the Shanghai venture. – o – Alliant Techsystems Inc, Minneapolis is to implement a cost-reduction programme to improve margins and enhance competitiveness, but the effort will result in a fourth-quarter pre-tax charge of $38m and will cost 20% of the company’s workforce their jobs; Alliant’s fiscal 1995 sales are expected to be relatively flat compared with fiscal 1994, and sales for fiscal 1996 are seen falling 10% to 15%. – o – Taiwan is studying the possibility of laying a submarine cable between Taipei and Shanghai to improve telecommunications: Taiwan has banned direct links with rival China since the end of the Chinese civil war in 1949; the first direct under-sea cable would significantly improve telephone quality on either side of the Taiwan Straits since all calls have presently to be routed via other parts of the world.
Comdisco Inc’s Comdisco Canada Ltd is to offer leasing and financial services to customers taking Digital Equipment of Canada Ltd boxes.
North Si
oux City, South Dakota-based Gateway 2000 Inc will begin shipping the ColorBook2 portable later this month: the 5 lbs 7 oz ColorBook2, starting at $3,500, adds integrated 16-bit stereo sound, enhanced video performance and bigger hard disk and memory.
CAE Inc, Toronto has bought privately-held Belgian company Trislot Systems NV for $7m: Trislot makes wedge wire filtering and separation products used in food and beverage, petrochemical and water treatment industries, and employs about 60 people with annual sales of $9.2m.
Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Digitool Inc introduced Version 3 of Macintosh Common Lisp: Version 3.0 is expected to ship in May at $600 with a 20% discount for education. – o – Guildford, Surrey-based Portable Add-ons Ltd claims to have the UK’s first PCMCIA card to combine an SCSI 2 Interface and a 16-bit stereo sound card within one PCMCIA-type 2 housing, the Multimedia Combo card: it is #564 and out now.
Many of Malawi’s government ministries are without phones this week after the state Posts & Telecommunications Corp cut off services until the ministries pay their bills, Reuter reports from Blantyre: the entire Capital Hill area that houses government ministries in the administrative capital Lilongwe had been cut off and Parliament in Zomba, northeast of Blantyre, was also without telephones; as of October, government ministries and offices owed it about $3m and private companies another $1m. – o – The Truevision subsidiary of RasterOps Corp has renewed the OEM agreement under which Avid Technology Inc uses its technology in the systems it develops for television and radio broadcasters: the relationship has existed since Avid was first founded, and includes both purchasing and manufacturing rights to Truevision products; it has an estimated value of $40m over time. – o – German printing and lithographic equipment manufacturer Linotype-Hell AG expects to make a small profit for 1994 after turning in a loss of about $100m for 1993: Preliminary figures enable us to conclude that we will slightly exceed our target of breaking even this year, the company said, adding that all divisions had contributed. – o – Allentown, Pennsylvania-based SubMicron Systems Corp has definitive agreement to acquire Systems Chemistry Inc of Santa Clara, California for 3.4m new shares: Systems Chemistry makes ultra-high-purity chemistry systems for use by the semiconductor and other industries. – o – Racal Electronics Plc and Honeywell Inc’s Satcom airline satellite communications system will be used by Swissair in what will be its first use on short-haul flights: 29 Swissair Airbuses are to be equipped at a cost of $13m, starting October.
Siemens AG has won a $30m contract to set up a digital telephone switching system capable of handling 230,000 lines in Morocco, expanding on an order placed last April for a system with 42,000 lines.
Microsoft Corp introduced Visual FoxPro 3.0 version 3.0 for Windows for delivery in March, saying it offers a 32-bit object-oriented development environment for rapid application development and enhanced client-server capabilities; pricing will be announced later.
GEC Plessey Telecommunications Ltd’s GPT Communication Systems Ltd has won a #1.2m order from the United Leeds Teaching Hospitals to install three iSDX digital telephone systems in three hospitals in Yorkshire: the systems will have a centralised switchboards and support spoken messages and direct dialling in for up to 5,000 staff.
Digital Equipment Corp’s fiscal second quarter performance is impressive and the 7% rise in turnover (see page seven) comes despite the businesses it has divested this year, and are a result of better than expected performances by the businesses it didn’t sell – on a like-for-like basis, growth would have been higher; chief executive Robert Palmer said Alpha system sales contributed $374m, or 20%, to product revenues, an impressive achievement from its standing start two years ago; but Palmer warned that another 5,000 staff are likel
y to depart by the end of the financial year in June, and no-one should get too carried away – the last quarter of last year saw the culmination of a period when recovering companies were at last in a position to install the new computers they had needed for some time, and almost all computer companies enjoyed a booming business climate. – o – Texas Instruments Inc and Hitachi Ltd have now officially inaugurated their new joint venture, TwinStar Semiconductor Inc: the new 16M-bit and 64M-bit memory chip company will be capitalised at $150m and Texas Instruments and Hitachi will each hold 25.56% of the venture’s equity, with the balance held by 13 financial institutions in the US, Europe and Japan; the manufacturing facility is under construction in Richardson, Texas, and the companies say they have targeted initial production for mid-to-late 1996.
New Jersey’s Public Service Electric & Gas Co has teamed with AT&T Corp to set up a customer communication system to read meters, monitor energy use, detect power outages and offer other services remotely.
ComputerVision Corp has entered into a #40m four-year research and education project with Warwick University: the aim of the collaboration is to deliver the latest manufacturing techniques for enhancing competitiveness to manufacturing industry across Europe and Asia.
The yo-yo shares of Tadpole Technology Plc rebounded sharply yesterday, making back almost all the ground they lost on Tuesday, rising 43 pence to reach 251 pence on volume of more than 1m shares traded.
AT&T Corp is setting up a wholly-owned subsidiary in China, AT&T China Ltd, which has been authorised to set up facilities to manufacture high-technology telecommunications equipment, and computer hardware and software products. – o – Commenting on its first quarter figures (page seven), Tandem Computers Inc says computer product revenues grew 24% compared with the same period last year; business with communications service providers now represents 36% of computer product revenues; unit volume of mid-range and high-end servers grew over 40% compared with the like period a year ago, despite anticipation of the introduction of the second generation of RISC servers; version 2 of the NonStop Kernel operating system will ship next month with support for NetWare, Posix programming interfaces, high-performance TCP/IP, new application development tools, improved Open Data Base Connectivity access, and new decision support features in the NonStop SQL/MP database; the UB Networks unit $90m in sales in its first quarter of 1995, up $4.3m from the like quarter last year, excluding divested businesses, and operating profit was $2.2m, up 83%.
Ascom Holding AG, Berne, Switzerland has finally worked out its long-gestating joint venture with L M Ericsson Telefon AB in the field of public switching: the company will be 60%-owned by Ericsson and 40% by Ascom and Ascom’s public switching unit will transfer its products to the venture, while Ericsson will provide modern technology and will also toss in its mobile infrastructure business in Switzerland; the venture will also include their existing joint-venture company, Ascom Ericsson Transmission AG; it will employ 900 people and do around $310m a year.
A flurry of orders for Eagan, Minnesota-based Cray Research Inc include one for a Cray J916 compact from the Middle East Supercomputing Center in Manama, Bahrain for bureau services; the CNET research arm of France Telecom, which installed a Cray C90 at its Lannion facility, will this month install an EL94 at its Issy Les Moulineaux facility for research related to transmission, switching and new component design; and Cranfield University in Bedford also ordered a J916.
Cellular Communications Network (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd signed a memorandum of understanding with Malaysia’s national oil company, Petronas, to look into forming a joint venture to operate a fibre optic network, laying the cables along the right-of-way of Petronas’s gas transmission pipeline along the co
ast of the Malaysian peninsular.
Trying to compete with Intel Corp is not going to be much fun for Cyrix Corp, Erika Klauer, an analyst at Salomon Brothers in New York, reckons: according to Dow Jones & Co, she reckons that its two fab partners, IBM Corp and SGS Thomson Microelectronics NV, are not as efficient at making chips as is Intel, and It’s safe to say that for each type of processor, Cyrix pays about five times more per chip than Intel; because of this manufacturing arrangement, she says, Cyrix has little control over the process, and likely will have trouble reducing its cost structure as chip prices tumble; Cyrix officials disagree, saying they can keep margins up by shrinking the size of its chips so it gets more chips per wafer – since it pays by the wafer; it also disagrees that IBM and SGS Thomson are less efficient and that Cyrix chips cost five time as much.
Sony Corp is bidding about $150m for the 51% stake in Sony of Canada Ltd currently held by Gendis Inc. – o – Telephone & Data Systems Inc, Chicago has a letter of intent to acquire Deposit Telephone Co, Binghamton, New York: the latter has about 8,000 telephone access lines within four local exchanges and has interests in the Binghamton Metropolitan Statistical Area and New York Number 5 rural service area cellular markets; no terms given.
Hauppauge, New York-based Excel Technology Inc has a letter of intent to acquire Watertown, Massachusetts optical scanner maker Cambridge Technology Inc for about $4.8m, mostly in cash, with possible unspecified additional payments based on future performance by the company; Cambridge reported sales up 47% at $4.6m for the year to June, and margins were up 80%.
Henniker, New Hampshire-based Softdesk Inc has reached definitive agreement to acquire Foresight Resources Corp for $3.75m in Softdesk shares: Foresight, based in Kansas City, Missouri develops computer-aided design software for home and office architectural design work.
Kingston, Ontario-based Andyne Computing Ltd has bought Standard Generalized Markup Language technology from ActiveSystems Inc for $2.25m, $250,000 in cash, the rest in the form of 333,333 new Andyne shares.
When you next visit one of the current crop of trade shows, and you find that one of the majors is missing, you can’t assume the company is in trouble – it may just be that like Compaq Computer Corp and Comdex, reports the Wall Street Journal, the company has pulled out because it found that it was spending more of its time briefing competitors than meeting customers.
