The boom has fallen, and Microsoft Corp duly announced that it plans to lay off 120 of the 645 people at its Seattle-area floppy disk duplicating and packaging plant, reflecting the rising popularity of CD-ROM for distribution of software.
It has been like drawing teeth getting Acorn Computer Group Plc or Oracle Corp to go beyond their cryptic statement of Wednesday on network terminal computers (CI No 2,827) but Oracle apparently told Dow Jones & Co that it is putting the finishing design touches to its first Internet terminal, which it expects to begin shipping in March, and implied that the thing was nothing to do with the Acorn deal, despite the fact that it uses the ARM 7500 RISC; the cost of manufacturing the thing will be under $200, it estimates, including $100 for 4Mb of memory and about $30 for an ARM 7500 RISC microprocessor; the rest of the cost covers a keyboard, mouse and network interface; the device will be about 8 on each side and 2 high, and will attach to a television set or a monitor.
Shares in Waltham, Massachusetts-based Interleaf Inc fell $1.50, more than 16%, to $7.75 yesterday morning after it warned that profits for its fiscal third quarter will be 1 cent to 3 cents a share on sales of $21m: both the turnover and profit are below expectations.
Despite a reduction in the level of government grants, Tower Semiconductor Ltd has decided to go ahead with a $240m investment to expand semiconductor production at its plant in northern Israel, Finance Minister Avraham Shohat announced; the government has cut the level of grants for capital investment in developing areas to 34% from 38%; he also said that towards 1997 the government should rethink its entire investment encouragement strategy and make major changes in the law – the level of grants will fall to 30% in 1997 but the Treasury believes steeper cuts are needed.
Shoe and other clothing retailer Sears Plc has given Anderson Consulting a facilities management contract worth ú344.5m over 10 years for information technology and accounting services: 900 computer employees will transfer.
Sunnyvale, California-based Integrated Silicon Solution Inc has licensed Intel Corp’s Flash memory patents and plans to begin volume shipments of Flash products under the licence before the end of June.
The Vebacom GmbH telecommunications venture of Veba AG and Cable & Wireless Plc, has been eliminated from the bidding for a stake in railway telecommunications company DBKom GmbH, Handelsblatt reckons: the paper says Deutsche Bahn AG has chosen four groups to go into the second round of bidding for the 49.9% stake on offer – the consortium of Mannesmann Eurokom GmbH, AT&T Corp and Deutsche Bank AG, plus Thyssen Telecom GmbH, RWE AG and Viag AG; DBKom chairman Elmar Huelsmann also said a separate agreement with Vebacom over use of railway tracks to lay communications cable has not yet been signed.
The ASCII Group Inc, Bethesda, Maryland trade group of independent computer dealers, has signed Electronic Data Systems Corp to create an on-line market on the Internet for distributing computer-related products and services: it said the service could revolutionise the distribution of computer products and services throughout the industry’s entire supply chain; the ASCII Internet market will provide the first Web-based service linking hardware and software manufacturers, distributors, dealers and consumers, although customers would be encouraged to make their purchases through local computer dealers; the network is backed by IBM Corp, Novell Inc, Hayes Microcomputer Products Inc, Netscape Communications Corp and Ingram Micro Inc.
West Palm Beach, Florida telecommunications network operator Able Telcom Holding Corp will acquire Austin, Texas-based International Mobile Tracking System Inc in a share exchange to be valued on International’s Mobile’s earnings in a period subsequent to closing: the target develops specialised wireless communications systems.
NEC Corp will next month form a wholly owned subsidiary in Laguna, the Philippines, to produce high-density printed wiring boards: NEC Components Philippines Inc will be capitalised at $17.8m and employ 950 staff; NEC plans to invest $49m to build a plant capable of producing 215,280 square feet of printed wiring board a month; it currently produces 538,200 square feet a month in Japan; construction starts in March and operations are to begin in January 1997, NEC said.
The worldwide semiconductor market grew a startling 40% to $154,700m in 1994, Dataquest Inc reckons.
If you are an Electronic Data Systems Corp or a Computer Sciences Corp, you can afford to adopt a take-it-or-leave-it attitude to facilities management customers, but for the likes of an IBM Corp or a Unisys Corp that really needs the business, its a desperately menial, low-margin and demeaning affair – take the deal that IBM is discussing with Hong Kong Telecommunications Ltd: the Cable & Wireless Plc subsidiary says it may form a partnership under which IBM would run its data centre operation and systems programming – but it will not go ahead unless IBM guarantees all 200 jobs in the data centre, and there is no question of IBM getting ownership of the centre – it would simply run the thing for a time.
A Malaysian Internet provider is $39,000 the poorer after two hackers took up a challenge to break its security system, the Star reported: Dinesh Nair and Thian Seong Yee took only minutes to crack Asia Connect’s $100,000 security system after the company said it would offer $19,500 to anyone that could; to prove it could be done, the pair intercepted electronic mail messages among Asia Connect’s staff.
Reuters Holdings Plc said it will launch a domestic money market transaction product in Brazil in March, following the introduction of the product in Mexico in 1995: it will utilise Reuters’ expertise in creating and enhancing systems to support screen trading in the foreign exchange and other financial markets; the service, which will be available in Sao Paolo and Rio de Janeiro, will cover three main classes of instruments, government securities, interbankcertificates of deposit and swaps.
Deutsche Telekom AG says that it hasn’t ruled out taking legal action against Alcatel-SEL AG after an Alcatel computer error caused the billing error on January 1 when new charges were brought in; the mistake is expected to cost Telekom $69m in compensation to customers.
Tata Industries Ltd, Bombay and Bell Canada International will provide phone service in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh: 51% of the joint venture is to be held by Tata Sons & Co Pvt Ltd while Bell Canada will own 39% and American International Group 10%; the bid by the Bell Canada-Tata team was found to be the only acceptable one in the January 1 1996 tender, it said.
According to Wendy Goldman Rohm, former Lotus Development Corp chief Jim Manzi was a mite nonplussed by IBM Corp’s Lou Gerstner and told colleagues after one bruising negotiating session that the man seemed to have no sense of humour: the only jokes he laughs at are his own.
