We suggested that Microsoft Corp seemed to be being remarkably provocative in announcing that it was bringing forward bundled Internet access in Windows95 as the Justice Department was investigating the whole concept of network bundling: now Justice has extended its antitrust investigation of the company into the bundling of the software for navigating the World Wide Web, Dow Jones & Co reports: according to the Financial Times, Microsoft has no contingency plan for removing the access software if Justice does bring a lawsuit, and will instead fight in the courts, in which case, it will be unable to ship Windows95 on August 24 as planned.
Rexon Inc has sold the assets of the tape software business of its Sytron Corp unit to the Arcada Software Inc arm of Conner Peripherals Inc, on undisclosed terms.
Hewlett-Packard Co is cutting prices by about $100 on its HP DeskJet 660C home printers and HP OfficeJet printer-facsimile-copiers: the DeskJet 660C printer for Windows and HP DeskWriter 660C printer for Macintosh will sell for about $400 each; OfficeJet and OfficeJet LX pr inter-fax-copiers will now sell for about $600 and $700 respectively, off $100 each.
Hewlett-Packard Co also announced price reductions of up to 22% or up to $800, in the US on some models of its Envizex and Entria X terminal product lines: the cuts follow Hewlett-Packard’s recent launch of the HP 500, a new Windows application server that gives Unix based workstation and X workgroup users access to Windows applications.
Denver-based Creative Programming & Technology Ventures Inc is seeking an institutional equity partner to help finance its its planned acquisition of a majority stake in RFX Inc, and will allow its option payment for the purchase of 75% of RFX to expire while it seeks to revise the deal – the purchase price had been set at $15m for RFX, which is a privately-held systems integrator and dealer of high-end three-dimensional animation graphics workstations, in Hollywood, California.
EMC Corp, now the world’s largest supplier of mainframe disk arrays, expects to double Asian turnover in 1995: the Hopkinton company, which already has more than a third of the estimated $5,000m 1995 worldwide data storage market, aims to secure at least 30% of the Asia-Pacific market by the end of 1996.
Greek state phone company OTE signed with Telecom Georgia to install a direct satellite link between the two countries which will be operational in October: the satellite link will improve telecommunications between Greece and Georgia amd other countries of the former Soviet Union; OTE also signed a preliminary agreement with Georgia Telecom to set up a joint venture in which OTE gets 47% to install and operate an independent phone network of 180,000 lines in Tbilisi.
The Hermes Europe Railtel BV joint venture planning to build a pan-European telecommunications network along railway tracks says that its shareholders have committed enough money for the project to go ahead: it plans to provide service to 12 cities in five countries by mid-1996, to 19 cities in eight countries by the end of 1996 and 55 cities across western and central Europe by 1999: Our plan for a pan-European fibre-optic network along the railway rights of way has moved several steps closer to reality, said Rob den Besten, chairman of Hit Rail BV, a consortium of 11 railway companies; Hermes is in turn a joint venture between Hit Rail and Global TeleSystems Group Inc, a US telecommunications service developer; all 11 railway companies – from Austria, Belgium, the UK, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland – are expected to contribute equally to the funding; the Hermes Europe Railtel pan-European network is intended to support Europe’s existing carriers as well as help emerging communications service companies meet their customers’ growing demands for cross-border communications; the company told Reuters it did not want to reveal the financing commitments nor details on the imminent choic
e of equipment vendor, said to be from L M Ericsson Telefon AB, Siemens AG, Alcatel NV and Nokia Oy.
British Telecommunications Plc and its Indian partner Wipro Ltd have now formally launched Wipro BT Ltd, their new joint venture company offering telecommunications services in India: as reported, the company will target business customers for electronic mail and data transfer services, as well as satellite-based data networks using very small aperture terminal technology: the venture is equally owned and is headquartered in the central southern city of Bangalore; it starts offering its services in September.
Mainly because machines are endlessly handed down or given ever more menial tasks as they age, we have rather more than one computer per employee at Apt Data Group Plc, but the Germans are not so well-resourced as the dreadful jargon has it: according to ZVEI, the Electronic Industry Association, Germany is not as developed an information society as many others and needs to catch up fast – Germans have 12 computers per 100 people compared with 30 in the US and 22 in Switzerland – Today Germany is only in the low to middle area internationally in terms of the distribution of user information technology, it said – every classroom, every library should have an Internet link it declared.
Apple Computer Inc says that it sold 150% more personal computers in China in the first half of this year than the first half of last year – but it is only thousands.
Network Application Technology Inc, Campbell, California, has added automatic trouble-shooting and report generation tools for version 2.1 of its MeterWare for Unix distributed local network monitoring software; MeterWare is from $5,000; EtherMeter, TokenMeter and MasterMeter network hardware probes are priced separately, the firm says.
NEC Corp’s NEC Technologies Inc unit in Mountain View, California has announced price cuts of up to 17% on the NEC Versa V Series of notebook personal computers; the Versa V/50C is cut $400 to $2,000.
The current shortage of manufacturing capacity in the semiconductor industry will likely last at least until 1997, executives from Texas Instruments Inc, Zilog Inc, Applied Materials Inc and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co Ltd, all panellists at a Robertson, Stephens & Co semiconductor conference, said: their companies and semiconductor firms industrywide are spending on new capital plant additions like never before – yet all this spending is not keeping up with the 20% annual growth in demand for chips – We are spending money like drunken sailors, said John Luke, president of Taiwan Semi USA, with plans to spend $500m a year for the next three years on capital plant expansions, but even though it is the largest chip making foundry in the world, it must ration its manufacturing capacity to customers; according to Reuters, Zilog chief executive Edgar Sack said industry-wide, 97 new chip fabrication plants are now under construction.
According to the US PC Week gossip column, in the beta release of Microsoft Corp’s Word for Windows95, if you type in :), the program substitutes an actual smiley face.
