The US company announced a 1.2Gb 2,5 disk drive earlier this year, but IBM Japan Ltd says it will begin shipping samples of a newly developed 1Gb 2.5 disk from next month: the drive measures 2.75 by 3.9 by 0.5 thick and weighs no more than 4.9: it was developed at IBM’s Fujisawa plant and will be produced at a factory in Thailand for worldwide shipment, and samples will be offered at $415 to $625.
The shareholders of Thyssen Telecom AG and Vebacom GmbH are considering joining forces, in which case Cable & Wireless Plc would be allied with BellSouth Corp in Germany: both camps are shareholders in the German E-Plus cellular phone network, Reuter reports from Telecom 95.
Azlan Group Plc shares jumped 55 pence to 475 pence after the Woking computer products distributor said it had agreed a distribution contract with Netscape Communications Corp as Netscape’s sole pan-European distribution partner for its Supernet on-line interactive system, and a UK distribution contract with Interactive Telephony Ltd, although one trader said the shares were still extremely illiquid: the company said the agreements were significant in developing products and services that will enable resellers to provide Internet access solutions to the corporate market.
Novell Inc said that, due to continued weakness in its applications software business, it expects earnings in the fourth quarter ending October 28 to be below analysts’ projections, and estimates earnings from operations for the quarter to be in the $0.15 to $0.18 per share range: William Blair & Co and Dillon Read projected in late August that the earnings for its fourth quarter would be $0.27 a share; it did $0.06 in the year ago quarter.
General Motors Corp and Electronic Data System Corp have now agreed in principle that the automaker will receive a one-time dividend for an undisclosed amount ahead of the planned spin-out of the latter, according to the Wall Street Journal.
The flotation of Pakistan Telecommunication Corp has been delayed until March: the company sold $898m of 100-share convertible vouchers in a foreign placing in September 1994 at a strike price of 55 rupees per share, but the price collapsed to around 30 rupees when it transpired that the prospectus for the vouchers had misled investors about the size of its subscriber base.
Superscape VR Plc, Hook, Hampshire virtual reality software specialist notes that it has increased staffing to 43 now from 14 at the time of its flotation and has established an office in Palo Alto; significant sales are being made to Japan; the company also reports that following its agreement with Northern Telecom Ltd in May, it has now signed a licensing agreement with the Canadian, which initially runs for four years and it gives Nortel the right to sell virtual reality applications on an exclusive basis to some of the North American telecommunications companies and some other specified corporations; Superscape gets $3m upfront plus a royalty on virtual reality sales, once they exceed a specified level.
The clips must be of pretty short duration: NEC Corp says it has developed the world’s first handheld video player that plays highly-compressed video off PC Cards.
So is he prepared to give up the licence to anyone willing to pay $307m if he’s reimbursed for the $119m he originally paid? Belgian state phone company Belgacom NV says it wants to pay only the $119m originally charged by the Belgian government for its Groupe Speciale Mobile cellular licence, and jibs at making that up to the $307m paid by rival Mobistar for the second licence – If tomorrow somebody comes and wants to pay $683m (for another licence) and go bankrupt we do not want to follow, chief executive John Goosens said scathingly; he said Belgacom should be treated on a equal footing with operators in other European countries – the operators in other countries did not have to pay anything, he said.
The Matra Datavision SA unit of Lagardere Groupe SA signed Compagnie des Machines
Bull SA to distribute its computer-aided design and manufacturing software in France.
France, lagging other Western countries in investment in South Africa, will sign a $30m deal this week to help finance telecommunications in South Africa, official sources said: France is trailing the US, the UK, Germany, Japan, Italy and the Netherlands in trade with South Africa since the end of apartheid.
Well we didn’t think so either: nobody is forecasting that Unisys Corp ‘s latest restructuring, into three separate businesses will lead to the company breaking itself up.
Can it conceivably be worth it? According to the Wall Street Journal, Siemens AG has spent $14m on its appearance and presentations at Telecom 95 in Geneva, which ends tomorrow – and it adds that Siemens is far from the most profligate.
Geac Computer Corp, Markham, Ontario, agrees with Tony Blair that libraries should be on the Internet, and its US unit, Geac Computers Inc , has formed an alliance with Internet software specialist Netscape Communications Corp under which Geac will provide Netscape open software directly to its library users, and will act as the single source for sales, support and installation, the company said.
L M Ericsson Telefon AB and GEC Plc’s Marconi Ltd are teaming on Synchronous Digital Hierarchy network transport systems in order to grow the world market for the technology, today estimated to be worth $2,000m and expected to grow to $5,000m by the turn of the century: the agreement involves licensing and operations from Marconi’s side and will use Ericsson’s presence in international telecommunications.
Apple Computer Inc may have spoilt the entire flight of an army of laptop users that happen to have machines that use Lithium ion batteries: PC Week hears that the Federal Aviation Administration is so alarmed at the idea of laptops bursting into flames at 30,000 feet that it is considering banning use of Lithium ion batteries in flight.
Microsoft Corp’s Exchange Server client-server messaging software must be coming close to setting new records for numbers of months as vapourware: originally promised to ship in 1993, it has now slipped to first quarter 1996, PC Week hears.
The French National Employers’ Federation says that France’s telecommunications market cannot be deregulated without a precise legislative calendar; the help of innovative companies; and regulations that will govern the new market: the Federation, which has been repeatedly at odds with the Chirac administration over what it considers excessive demands on business, demanded that the National Assembly put legislation in place by next spring to deregulate everything as of January 1 1996, and also demanded establishment of a regulatory agency distinct from the Ministry of Posts & Telecommunications.
Franklin Electronic Publishers Inc, Burlington, New Jersey maker of those pocket electronic dictionaries and reference works, is to do a very specialised version: it has been signed by Facts & Comparisons Inc , St Louis to develop an electronic version of the publication for pharmacists and drug data specialists; Franklin’s electronic Drug Facts & Comparisons will instantly retrieve and compare information on drugs grouped by therapeutic class, shipping in early 1997.
Portugal Telecom SA, privatised in June, has offered $20m for a 40% equity stake in Cabo Verde Telecom which serves the former Portuguese territory of Cape Verde Islands, off the coast of West Africa, and said it will modernise and expand the current network using digital technology between now and the year 2000: spending about $90m it said it will install 35,000 new lines, and link to the future submarine cable Cabo Cabral as well as developing the access to related businesses such as cellular and paging. – o – Denmark’s national telecommunications operator Tele Danmark A/S has signed a memorandum of understanding with Unicom, China’s second telecommunications operator, to look at technical and economic viabili
ty of three telecommunications projects in China: projects being researched are a 1,875-mile fibre optic cable from Chengdu to Shanghai, a Groupe Speciale Mobile telephone system in Hubei province and pager systems in 13 provinces; the last will be researched jointly with Norway’s telecommunications operator Telenor A/S said the Dane.
A PDM/EDM Vendors Forum has been launched in the UK with the aim of developing awareness among potential customers of the use of product data and engineering document management software: there are 30 member companies and the steering committee comprises Autodesk Inc, Computervision Corp, Electronic Data Systems Corp, Intergraph Corp and Pafec Ltd among others; first initiatives will include a book on this kind of document management, and Proforum, series of fora that will be staged during the winter.
