Radius Inc is to put its acquired SuperMac name on its Macintosh clones sold by third parties, MacWeek reports: a start-up formed by Rick Schrameck, former vice-president of Radius’s cloning efforts, is expected to sell the Radius clones under the SuperMac name, and Radius is to take a 15% equity stake in the start-up, which would offer the clones mail-order and direct; Radius would also get 1% of net revenues from the new venture; Radius is said to be selling about 1,200 to 1,500 Mac-compatible machines per month, well below its monthly target of 2,000, and the sluggish sales on have been blamed on manufacturing problems – but that can’t be true because they are being made for Radius by IBM Corp. – o – S3 Inc is in trouble with Brooktree Corp over its sensational new Trio 64V+ multimedia chip that Compaq Computer Corp is building into its home computers: Brooktree is suing S3 alleging infringement of a Brooktree patent issued in April: the patent relates to a multimedia processing and display architecture in which frames of graphics and video information are first recorded in a buffer memory and then processed so the graphics information can be displayed on a monitor, and the video information can be converted to the graphics format and overlaid in a screen window. – o – Investors were balking at terms of a $400m debt offering by the Globalstar LP $1,800m satellelite mobile phone system being developed by Loral Corp and friends, and Globalstar now says it plans to proceed using a $250m bank financing led by Chemical Bank: as a result, it will cancel plans for a private offering of high-yield debt securities and its strategic partners will guarantee the loan: investors were similarly resistant to the rival Iridium Inc project, reflecting the risks ahead for a half-dozen groups planning to pour more than $11,000m into mobile phone satellite systems during the next three years; the offer, presented three weeks ago, had yet to be placed because institutional investors wanted a higher return and better guarantees of project completion than backers had offered. – o – Weakness in the face of the onslaught from Sony Corp’s PlayStation, or strength? Sega of America Inc cut the price of its 32-bit Saturn games player with Virtua Fighter Remix at $350, down from $400, and is offering it for the first time with no game at $300. – o – Caterer Compass Group Plc saw its shares soar yesterday after its Canteen Corp US unit won a five-year food service contract with IBM Corp that is expected to generate over $250m in revenue from the end of this year: under the deal, it will provide food and vending services to more than 100,000 IBM employees in 29 sites in the US, in employee dining rooms, shops, executive dining facilities and over 3,000 vending machines – although many of those sites are likely to close during the term of the deal. – o – Peek Plc reports a ú7m contract in China to provide a total management system for two twin-bore tunnels on the Chongquing-Chengdu highway in the central province of Sichuan. – o – Trying to get over the shock of National Union of Mineworkers leader Arthur Scargill threatening to leave the Labour Party, opposition leader Tony Blair said he had agreed a deal with British Telecommunications Plc that he would allow it to get into the cable television business in return for a commitment to connect all UK schools, hospitals, colleges and libraries free. – o – Seagate Technology Inc is expanding its recording head manufacturing facility in Ipoh, Malaysia only three months after it opened: Seagate is adding 380,000 square feet, to be ready to go by next August. – o – MCI Communications Corp announced that it has a major facilities management contract with Microsoft Corp for a customer support call centre for the Microsoft Network in both North and South America, MCI’s largest contract of this kind to date: under terms of the agreement, MCI has built a dedicated Microsoft Network Call Centre alongside its own MCI Proof Positive Call Center in Pinellas Park, Florida, staffed by people trained in the Network.
– o – Cyrix Corp has begun initial commercial ships of its M1 Pentium-class microprocessor, but says it will not give further information until the formal product launch. – o – The US Federal Communications Commission has set December 11 as the date for its C block auction of 2GHz bandwidth for small businesses now that a Federal appeals court has allowed the auction, originally planned for August 29, to go ahead: the Commission had changed the auction rules to remove bidding preferences for women and minorities to prevent any delay in the auctions, but a Federal court ordered the delay anyway; short-form applications to participate in the auction are now due by November 6. – o – Sony Corp said on Monday that $70m of PlayStation hardware, games and accessories had been sold across the Europe since the Friday launch. – o – Blenheim Group USA Inc claims that 34,000 people made it to Unix Expo. – o – Barely a month after shipping Windows95, Microsoft Corp already is lining up a pool of testers for the first beta release of Windows96, code-named Nashville, PC Week reports: those that have received invitations say Microsoft says it intends to begin testing Nashville sometime during the next few months; Windows96 is described as a point upgrade to Windows95 and is expected to ship by late next year; expected to have all the bug-fixes Microsoft intends to include in its first service pack, plus integrated support for the NetWare 4.1 requester, DirectX multimedia extensions, and infra-red networking support. – o – The Atlas venture between France Telecom and Deutsche Telekom AG still has hurdles to clear despite a pledge from France and Germany to allow alternative infrastructure to carry telecommunications from next July: the European Commission is not expected to give its final verdict on Atlas, which will offer data transmission services to large companies, before May or June 1996. – o – General Motors Corp’s Electronic Data Systems Corp has bought a 50% stake in the Tadiran Information Systems Ltd software subsidiary of Israel’s Tadiran Ltd for $9m: Tadiran Information Systems, which was established in 1990, reported sales of $26m last year; the deal is the latest entry of a large multinational into companies owned by Koor Ltd , Israel’s largest industrial concern and the parent company of Tadiran; in recent months Volvo AB, Henkel AG and Northern Telecom Ltd have all bought or taken options to buy stakes in Koor-owned companies. – o – Racal Electronics Plc said its german unit Racal Datacom GmbH has been chosen by Deutsche Telekom as a partner for the first high-speed voice, data and image network for the German state of Rheinland Pfalz which will enable government bodies to reduce costs and operate more efficiently, Racal said: the company did not give financial details. – o – Compaq Computer Corp has introduced its all Pentium processor-based ProLinea E Series desktop personal computer systems, an extension of its existing ProLinea line, ranging from $1,370 to $2,000: the Compaq ProLinea E Series is Windows95 ready and has a wide range of Pentium microprocessors, large standard hard disks, 8Mb of memory and a three-year limited warranty; the company said the new series is cheaper than comparable models from Hewlett-Packard Co and IBM Corp. – o – NexGen Inc warns that it expects to report a wider first-quarter loss than analysts’ best guess of 27 cents a share: the Milpitas Pentium clonemaker is blaming the necessary pricing actions that it took in response to the aggressive price reductions mandated by Intel Corp.
