Digital Equipment Corp says that in its most recent quarter, machines built around the Alpha RISC microprocessor accounted for almost half of product sales – excluding personal computers: product sales in the quarter came in at $1,750m, personal computer sales are believed to be running at about $1,000m a year or a little more, and since they are growing and this is the fiscal third quarter, they accounted for perhaps $300m of product sales, leaving $1,250m for everything else; almost half of that implies Alpha sales of between $550m and $600m, which would give an annualised $1,200m or so, although smaller sales in the first two quarters suggest that sales for the fiscal year to June 30 will come out at about $1,000m – not really enough for a $13,000m company.
