IBM Corp is not the only one to have let a semiconductor fortune slip through its fingers when it sold its 20%-plus stake in Intel Corp instead of simply hanging on to it: the Techninvest technology investment newsletter points out that the near 10% stake in Micron Technology Inc that Amstrad Plc bought for ú45m at the height of the memory chip shortage in in 1988 and later sold in 1991 for ú33m when the shortage eased, is now worth a raging hot ú1,300m; Amstrad is valued in the market at ú321m…
Once it has won its independence from General Motors Corp, Electronic Data Systems Corp is expected to revive its quest for a telecommunications partner, and while it might well renew its interest in an alliance with British Telecommunications Plc, joining its partnership with MCI Communications Corp, it could also either buy or agree to be acquired by a Baby Bell – and the most ambitious by far these days appears to be Nynex Corp, which might well be interested; what is in the spin-off for General Motors shareholders? Mainly that the drain on the company from the need to bolster its pension fund; the automaker says that it has no current plans to spin off Hughes.
Citing unexpectedly strong demand for personal computers, Apple Computer Inc chief financial officer Joe Graziano said supplies of Power Macs will remain tight: he sees the company product-constrained into the early part of calendar 1996; Power Macs have been in short supply since their release a year ago, but the company plans to increase supply substantially over the next couple of quarters.
Ottawa-based Newbridge Networks Corp reports that France Telecom has chosen it to supply products for a pilot broadband transmission project for business customers: the project will use Asynchronous Transfer Mode switches, and is a joint undertaking between France Telecom and Deutsche Telekom AG; Newbridge will supply France Telecom with the 36150 Mainstreet ATMnet access switch, the 36120 MainStreet packet transfer exchange and 4602 MainStreet intelligent network station, starting from this month.
IBM Corp’s Lotus Development Corp has signed India’s Software Technology Group Pvt Ltd to conduct training courses for users of Lotus Notes, its client-server product: Rahul Nanda, who runs the Indian arm of the Cambridge company, said the product required special skills to develop applications around it, and existing and prospective corporate users and their staff could gain from the courses, he added.
Anyone who is thinking of flinging away their wristwatch in early anticipation of the amazing Internet watch reported to be in development within the semiconductor division of Philips Electronics NV should hang on to it for a few more years: evidently a picture of a wristwatch complete with a tiny video screen and Internet dial-up access software was presented as a visionary product at a trade press show; the vision is there but the technology isn’t, said Philips, which reckons that the technology would not be there to produce a working model any time before 2002.
Devotees of David Lynch’s Twin Peaks came away with the firm impression that the Pacific Northwest is a decidedly odd region, and they would be right in that perception: while most parts of the world apart from France regard inward investment as God-given, not so, many Oregonians – according to the Wall Street Journal, the locals look askance at the Intel Corps, Fujitsu Ltds and LSI Logic Corps all building vast new chip plants in and around Portland in the Willamette Valley region dubbed Silicon Forest these days; cheap land, cheap labour and tax breaks are the lures that have led to an unconscionable commitment of more than $13,000m to high-tech construction; the state does need the work the new plants will bring, because since 1988, federal logging restrictions and automation have cut Oregon’s employment in lumbering by more than 20% to about 53,000 jobs – but that does not cut any ice and people standing on antigrowth tickets are getting elected as the locals rem
ember that Tektronix Inc was once the biggest employer in the state but made so many mistakes that it had to slash its payroll – 7,500 in Oregon now compared with 24,000 in 1981, causing unemployment to shoot up and housing prices in the Portland area to slump by 25%, and say that booms are typically followed by busts; high-tech pollution and a radical change in the state’s leisurely way of life are other concerns of the folk that in the 1970s took up the provocative rallying cry Don’t Californicate Oregon.
There are a few 12-way multiprocessor IBMulators about – AlliedSignal Inc of Morristown, New Jersey manufacturer for the engineered materials, automotive and aerospace industries, upgraded its Amdahl Corp mainframe to a 5995-12670M 12-way system to meet the information processing demands created by growing business needs, it says here; AlliedSignal received 22 bids for upgrading its system to handle increased demand, less than 5% separated the 22 bids, but the deciding factors were the reduced software licensing costs, reduced energy requirements, reduced footprint and proven service capabilities that came with the new Amdahl machine.
You have to hand it to Lou Gerstner – he’s mastered the ghastly jargon superbly, witness a quote from IBM Corp’s recent annual meeting with analysts – Objects is an important part of our technical underpinning of all of our solution work…
