The future of the X-terminal business looks ever murkier, and IBM Corp has now thrown in the towel, Unigram.X, our sister publication reports. The company is exiting the X terminal building business and is to begin reselling Network Computing Devices Inc’s R-series RISC-based Explora and HMX terminals to the RS/60000 base in place of its own X Stations. Network Computing is taking on six IBM employees at its Austin, Texas facility to provide technical support for existing X stations for two years. IBM will phase out its X Station Models 140, 150 and PowerPC 603-based 160 within 90 days. According to Zona Research Inc, the X terminal hardware business slumped to $520.5m in 1995 from $645m in 1994; IBM’s share fell to $25.5m (4.9%) from $65.7m (10.1%) in revenue terms over the same period. The business is expected to decline even further as Network Computing Devices estimates its relationship with IBM will be worth only $50m over the first three years. Network Computing’s 21.4%, $111.4m share of the 1995 market was down on the previous year’s $143.3m, 22.1% share. Network Computing Devices believes IBM is only the first of the major companies still building their own X terminals – others are Sun Microsystems Inc, Hewlett-Packard Co and Digital Equipment Corp – which will be forced to quit the business. The market is simply not big enough to sustain the multiple development efforts, it says. X terminals never became the ubiquitous low-cost diskless desktop their proponents hoped – because of the network resources they take up (applications run on the server) and their lack of access to personal computer applications. Many are now so powerful they differ little from low-end workstations.
