Digital Equipment Corp last night duly announced that it was selling its South Queensferry, Scotland wafer fabrication facility to Motorola Inc: the plant, sole source for some Alpha RISCs and a second source for Advanced Micro Devices Inc Am486 microprocessors, employs about 500 people and covers about 210,000 square feet; no financial details were given; the deal is expected to be completed this summer.
North Sioux City, South Dakota-based Gateway 2000 Inc says that from today, all new Gateway Pentium machines shipped directly to customers worldwide will incorporate Intel Corp’s corrected Pentium chip.
Following its agreement with the Birla group on telecommunications (see front), AT&T Corp says it intends to bring its entire range of hardware businesses to India as soon as it can identify suitable partners or entry strategies, an AT&T official told Dow Jones & Co.
Jabra Corp, the San Diego company with the EarPhone device that fits in the ear but picks up the user’s speech, has arrived in Europe, and has chosen Edinburgh as its base: it says it found Scotland’s scrupulous research standards and indigenous design talents to be increasingly high, and identified top-notch engineers specialising in wireless, spread spectrum, noise cancellation, and signal processing technologies; it also liked the attractive levels of UK state financial assistance and the highly skilled and cost-effective workers.
Compaq Computer Corp added the Compaq Presario CDS 524 to its line of home computers: it uses a 66MHz 80486DX2 with 8Mb memory and has an estimated street price of $1,850.
Dell Computer Corp says it has completed worldwide conversion of its Pentium processor-based OptiPlex product line to Intel Corp’s updated Pentium chip, and all customers are now guaranteed to receive systems incorporating a Pentium that has the flaw fixed.
Racal Electronics Plc reports that its Satcom communications system for airline passengers will be able to offer commercial applications such as on-line catalogue shopping and in-flight hotel reservations shortly: the interactive services are provided by using a new technology for data transmission called Data-3, and a link-up with British Telecommunications Plc’s Alis airline services processing centre.
Chantilly, Virginia-based Genicom Corp, inheritor of what was left of the Centronics impact printer empire, says its planned acquisition of substantially all the assets and liabilities of Printer Systems Corp of Gaithersburg, Maryland, will strengthen its laser printer product technology and continue its growth in the laser printing systems business; Printer Systems had revenues of about $10m in 1994.
And Genicom Corp said it may buy Harris Adacom Network Services Inc, taking substantially all of the assets and liabilities including its Canadian operations; no more will be said until the talks conclude.
Saltire Plc is the new name of Cannon Street Investments Plc, a company that has dipped in and out of the electronics orbit over the past few years: it is now very much back in again with the acquisition of electronics distributor Maplin Electronics Plc for up to ú16m; Maplin joins the existing Altai electronics distribution business, and sells a wide range of electronic components and equipment to individuals, to industrial customers and to educational bodies, via mail order catalogues and via 33 specialist retail outlets; in the year to June 30, Maplin did operating profit of ú1.5m on ú29m sales.
Another of Louis Gerstner’s RJR Nabisco cronies, IBM Corp treasurer Fred Zuckerman, 60, announced suddenly that he will leave the company later this month; he will be replaced by Jeffrey Serkes, 36, who is currently assistant treasurer.
Tandy Corp says December sales from all its stores rose 30% to $820.2m; sales from stores that were open this time last year increased 8%.
Waltham, Massachusetts-based Interleaf Inc warns that it expects its results to fall below expectation for the third fiscal
quarter to December 31: the company expects about a $4m operating loss from recurring operations and has had to renegotiate a major contract, resulting in a non-recurring revenue adjustment of $2m; third quarter sales after this adjustment are expected to be about $21m and the adjusted loss will be $6m or so.
Delrina Corp, Toronto reports that British Telecommunications Plc has licensed its OEM line of facsimile and data communications software for its Prologue 1414 pocket modem.
Our first reaction to BellSouth Corp winning the pivotal role in Holland’s would-be second telecommunications carrier (see front) was that since the company’s service area in the south-east of the US is substantially bigger than the whole of the Netherlands, the company should have all the necessary skills – but then we realised that US local phone companies really are local, so that if you phone from say Atlanta to Jacksonville, both within the BellSouth region, you must go via a long-distance carrier such as AT&T Corp – so BellSouth’s long-distance skills are vestigial.
Sanyo Electric Co is transferring all personal computer manufacture to Mexico to reduce costs, according to the Nippon Keizai Shimbun.
Kalamazoo Computer Group Plc unit Kalamazoo System Print Plc has bought the GMS Tickets business and assets known from the Active Computer Services Ltd group of companies: GMS does security printing for football clubs, theatres and concert venues from its base near Sheffield and Kalamazoo is paying up tp ú699,000 for the business – ú499,000 cash already paid, another ú150,000 attributable to goodwill to be paid in cash on October 6 1995 and up to ú50,000 more depending on the turnover to September.
Activision Inc says it will receive royalty advances of up to $5.5m under an agreement that allows Bandai Visual Co Ltd to distribute Japanese-language versions of several Activision Infocom titles in Japan.
Correction: Sherwood Computer Services Plc sold its final 25% in Guardian Computer Services Ltd for ú825,000 in May, valuing the company at the time at ú3.3m, but sources suggest that the buyout announced this week may have raised between seven and eight times that figure for ICL Plc – if so, Sherwood must be feeling a little sorry for itself, while ICL’s treasury will show a significantly healthier year-end glow; in 1993, Guardian made ú1.6m pre-tax on turnover of ú6.2m, and with turnover estimated at some ú9m for 1994, it has been growing very fast (CI No 2,574).
Anyone that read the International Herald Tribune yesterday will be regaled with the thoughts of Chairman Gates on the prospects for starting new software companies: anyone that read the Trib and the Guardian will have noticed that the end of the Trib version was rather painfully massacred by the subs… bit of a pity that, really, when early in the piece, Bill says I’m excited about writing it because it lets me communicate to a wide audience without being edited into a soundbite or filtered through somebody else’s perceptions…
