Toshiba Corp is set to provide key semiconductor fabrication technology to Winbond Electronics Corp of Taiwan in exchange for an undisclosed share of the company’s chip output: under the deal, Toshiba will provide Winbond with production technology for 16M-bit dynamic memory chips and 1Mb fast statics, to be made at a new 8 wafer fabrication plant starting in 1996 said a Toshiba spokesman: Toshiba will share output, for marketing under its own name, with most production earmarked for the Asian market.
Detroit-area businesses are set to have their electronic mail addresses listed in the 1996-97 Yellow Pages when suburban phone books arrive in April and the central area book arrives in autumn: individuals may also find their own electronic mail addresses listed in the White Pages by 1997 or 1998.
European Community Competition Commissioner Karel Van Miert and Italian Telecommunications Minister Agostino Gambino reached a breakthrough in talks over the unfair advantage the state phone company had been given in digital cellular telephony: no details were given of what had been agreed, but the European Commission told Italy it must take steps to ensure that Omnitel-Pronto Italia SpA, the cellular consortium led by Ing C Olivetti & Co SpA, is able to compete on equal terms with state-owned Telecom Italia SpA; It first took legal action against Rome in 1994 for charging Omnitel-Pronto $750m for its licence and now wants the government to require Telecom Italia to pay the same fee or grant Omnitel concessions worth an equal amount.
Reuters Holdings Plc has launched a set of new workstation applications for financial markets designed to give customers greater flexibility to develop their own trading strategies: the new software, named Kobra, offers options to select and display different types of information, such as data, text and graphics that can be linked together in real time, Reuters said, and is designed for use under most operating systems and hardware, and can be used by all sectors of a bank’s financial trading operation.
Debt-ridden QMS Inc, Mobile, Alabama laser printer maker and printing software specialist has completed its international restructuring by finalising the sale of the assets of its Japanese and other Asian operations to a new company headed by Yoji Kawai, previously president and general manager of QMS Japan KK: Kawai’s company will assume all liabilities of QMS Japan KK, and part of the deal includes an exclusive master distributor agreement with QMS for the new company to continue to market products under the QMS name throughout Japan and in other Asian countries.
The strict conditions imposed by the US Federal Communications Commission on the $3,800m or so investment in Sprint Corp by the state-owned France Telecom and Deutsche Telekom AG are that it will treat Sprint as a dominant carrier on its international services to Germany and France from the US until it finds that both countries are offering competitive opportunities to other firms to enter their markets, and it means that any changes Sprint wants to make must first be approved; it will freeze the number of circuits Sprint is allowed to operate on these routes at current levels until France and Germany have taken sufficient steps to create alternative infrastructure opportunities, and ensure opportunities to provide basic switched voice resale; the agency will also impose new disclosure and reporting requirements on Sprint, as reported, making it file annual reports detailing the steps France and Germany are taking to open their markets, and by March 31 1998 must issue a final report on the progress both have made in opening their markets – it the Commission finds that the final reports shows an overall lack of progress, it can convene to determine whether it should revoke Sprint’s facilities authorisations on the US to France and US to Germany routes and revoke any of its authorisations on these routes.
British Telecommunications Plc does not seem to worried by the decision of the US Federal Communications Commission to approve the Sprint Corp-France Telecom-Deutsche Telekom AG alliance: it points out that the Commission has imposed heavy conditions on the deal which will limit the ability of the three and their Phoenix joint venture to provide services between the US and France and the US and Germany, adding that the decision keeps up the pressure on France and Germany to allow competitive opportunities sooner rather than later, adding that it gives hope to customers and carriers alike that choice, rather than monopoly, will become the norm, rather than the exception, in those key European markets.
Motion Works Group Ltd is to buy Imagineer.com Information Services Inc, a Vancouver, British Columbia Internet marketing firm and Webzine publisher, on undisclosed terms: the acquisition is part of Motion Works’ strategy to serve the markets for Internet corporate communications, advertising and commerce.
Performance Systems International Inc, or PSINet Inc as it likes to be known now is to inject ú1.5m into its UK subsidiary, EUNet GB, the former University of Kent-based Internet access provider in which it acquired a 85% stake in June (CI No 2,690): it will use the money to expand its points of presence in the UK and the workforce by 30%; it has recently added new Points of Presence in Sheffield and Leeds.
MR Data Management Group Plc has changed its name to the anonymous M-R Group Plc and appointed a new finance director: the London-based data transcription and document image processing company has appointed Michael Enright as finance director, drafted in from a management consultancy company, and Phillip Rhodes has also joined the board as a non-executive director following spells at Thorn Lighting Group, BET Plc and United Distillers; M-R presumably wants to hide the nature of its business with the name change, after it hit trouble in the summer (CI No 2,767), and believes that the all-important hyphen will avoid banality, but at least it will be a lot easier to find in databases in the future.
Telemetrix Plc’s San Diego investment, GTI Corp, where the UK company holds 57%, has been hit by a shareholder class action lawsuit, which GTI declares it will defend.
Another company getting mercilessly squeezed is Atari Corp, which in a measure of desperation has slashed the price of its Jaguar 64 games machine to $100: four new titles for the thing were launched last week and many more are promised.
Microsoft Corp’s First Father To Be, Bill Gates – William Gates III – and his wife Melinda French have decided not to continue the family tradition, and whichever sex the baby whose release date has been set for late May turns out to be, he or she will not be William IV.
Nokia Oy said the US mobile phone hand-set market was developing better than stated in the company’s eight-month 1995 report in October: it added that the Asian market is also doing very well, but declined further comment on market growth.
