The rationale behind the Sprint Corp alliance with France Telecom and Deutsche Telekom AG falls apart if the two monopolies are barred from proceeding with their Atlas venture (see front), whereupon the choices facing Sprint start to look difficult again: it could go with just one of the continentals, but it is ulikely that either would come up with the full $4,200m it needs, and neither has a firm pan-European strategy in place anyway, which suggests that Sprint might have to look elsewhere altogether – and yet again, a UK company would begin to look like the only game in town; British Telecommunications Plc is ruled out by its MCI Communications Corp alliance, but Cable & Wireless Plc remains delightfully unencumbered internationally, is in process of putt ing together a continental strategy – and Sprint already holds the US end of Cable’s transatlantic PTAT-1 fibre optic link; big downside of course is that Cable & Wireless does not have the cash to invest in Sprint, but it already has a financially powerful partner in Veba AG in Germany, which with Cables must be flirting with similarly powerful utilities in other major European countries, so that assembly of a grand alliance that included Cable & Wireless, Veba and Sprint, which would face very few regulatory difficulties, looks entirely feasible.
Meantime in France, a gentle liberalisation was introduced yesterday when the government authorised state railway operator Societe Nationale des Chemins de Fer to provide transmission services to the two private cellular telephone operators, ending the requirement that they use France Telecom lines to link their cells: it says it may allow cellular operators to use cable television networks later and the network of state-owned Electricite de France as well as those run by the toll-road operating firms.
Compaq Computer Corp cut prices with immediate effect on its Contura Aero ultra-portable notebooks by up to 19%: the Contura Aero 4/25 Model 170 is now $900, the Aero 4/33 Model 170 is $1,300, off 19%.
Intel Corp hopes that China will prove fertile ground for Native Signal Processing on the Pentium and has launched a drive to license Chinese computer companies to use it: desktop publishing systems leader Founder Group has formed a partnership with Intel to adopt the technology to promote sales of its Pentium colour publishing systems.
In an edgy non-aggression pact, Microsoft Corp and Novell Inc have agreed a co-operative technical support pact to meet the needs of customers whose installations include products from both companies: key elements of the deal include jointly authored technical support, and notes on integration issues, a management-escalation programme to resolve complex support issues involving the two companies more efficiently, co-sponsored support fora, a product-exchange programme, a technical information exchange, and a mentor exchange and cross-training programme between the two.
Commenting on its figures Dell Computer Corp says more than 90% of its sales are still to businesses, government agencies and educational institutions, and that it believes direct sales to consumers, currently less than 10% of the total, can grow significantly as consumers grow more experienced with computer products and become increasingly able to take advantage of direct sales and service with Dell; the company has finally recovered the ground it lost in its notebook debacle and says sales for the first quarter were driven by notebook market penetration, the transition to Pentium-based processors and by geographic expansion; notebook sales in the quarter rose by 35% from the preceding quarter to $173m or 17% of total system revenue against just $16m a year ago.
IBM Corp is getting sentimental in its old age: as we told you, the PowerPC-based AS/400s are expected in the same week as the Power Personals, and we now hear that they wlll appear on Wednesday June 21, two days after the desktops, because it is the anniversary of the original Silverlake AS/400 launch. >>Nq
AT&T Corp’s AT&T Wireless Services is a member of the six-member Irish Cellular Telephones consortium, which plans to bid for the second Groupe Speciale Mobile cellular licence in Eire: Irish Cellular also includes Princes Holdings Ltd, United International Holdings Ltd, Tele-Communications International Inc, Independent Newspapers Plc and Riordan Communications Ltd; the firm will base itself in Limerick; as reported, Unisource Mobile BV has teamed with Motorola Inc and Sigma Wireless Ltd to form the Persona consortium to bid; Irish telecommunications group ESAT has declared an interest in bidding but has yet to announce any partners.
Intel Corp has decided to get skilled users to test-drive the P6 ahead of its launch in the hopes that they will find any serious bugs that its own comprehensive testing has missed: later this summer, it will begin lending personal computers using an early version of the P6 to users like the professor that disclosed the Pentium flaw.
Commenting on its storm-damaged figures, Nintendo Co Ltd put the blame for its faded profits on the soaraway yen: it suffered a daunting $415m foreign exchange loss as the yen climbed; tough competition overseas, a slump in Japanese share prices (Japanese companies invest much of their spare cash in other companies) and the Kobe earthquake in January, which undermined sentiment amongJapanese consumers, also hurt it.
Stet SpA plans to bring forward implementation of its $8,000m cable investment project to 1998 from 2000, which calls for 10m homes to be linked to a fibre optic network that would enable the telephone company to deliver multimedia services throughout the country; separately, the government said it was still committed to completing privatisation of Stet before year-end.
Monroe, Louisiana-based Century Telephone Enterprises Inc reports that its Metro Access Networks unit has begun building the downtown phase of a fibre optic Metropolitan Area Network down in Austin, Texas.
Cap Gemini Sogeti SA says that in constant exchange rates, its first quarter turnover increased 10.8%.
Cray Research Inc expects to expand its 140-member worldwide direct sales force, adding another 30 to 40 positions by year-end; Cray also expects to bolster its third-party sales, increasing that channel to the point where it accounts for 30% of its total sales over a three-year period, up from 5% at present.
Siemens Nixdorf Information Systems Ltd has launched the Qualified Partner Programme to boost its UK sales of personal computers and mid-range systems through resellers: they can either buy equipment from the company or have Siemens act as a contractor in specific market areas; first to sign up is Logitek Distribution Ltd, selling Siemens personal computers to dealers, network integrators and resellers, adding to its Unix, network and communications product lines.
They had to pull that once out, didn’t they – a Wall Street Journal Europe feature is headlined Hiring Outside Firms To Run Computers Isn’t Always a Bargain: Railcars Missed Connections When Southern Pacific Turned to IBM for Help.
