Which side will win the battle of the digital videodisk standards? Despite the apparently greater support for the Toshiba Corp standard, and the claims for superior quality for it, on the technical side, the argument may be going Sony Corp’s way: any system has got to play the millions of audio compact disks in people’s homes today, which use a standard also set by Sony and Philips Electronics NV, and there are concerns that the idea of recording on both sides of the disk is a lousy one, making labelling more difficult, manufacturing more complicated, and most of all threatening to make the players significantly more expensive – it costs you about half the price of today’s players to get a faulty or failed laser replaced.
Cable & Wireless Plc won a victory in the Philippines when the Supreme Court reversed a 1992 ruling blocking its 40%-owned Eastern Telecommunications Philippines Inc from operating an international gateway and linking this to the network of Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co: the company says it is happy with its investment in Eastern, and doesn’t plan others in the country. – o – Tandy Corp’s Incredible Universe is going to get even more incredible: the company says it plans to open the world’s largest consumer electronics and home appliance store in Houston in the autumn, creating an Incredible Universe superstore that will cover 197,000 square feet – 12,000 more square feet than the nine other Incredible Universes; it projects $80m annual sales from it, and overall is looking for close to $1,000m or so from the Universes this year, up from $400m last year; Houston will be one of at least eight and possibly nine Incredible Universe store openings it plans for this year, Tandy told Reuters.
IBM Corp now has the full version of OS/2 Warp, with the WIN-OS2 Windows 3.1 emulator included; the WebExplorer, a native OS/2 application for navigating the World Wide Web, is now complete and included in the BonusPak for OS/2; OS/2 Warp 3 is $130 without WIN-OS/2, $200 with it, and upgrading from OS/2 2.1 and 2.11 to full Warp is $130.
San Jose-based chip fabrication equipment developer Silicon Valley Group Inc has taken Intel Corp, Motorola Inc and Texas Instruments Inc on board as investors: each bought $10m of Series B convertible redeemable preferred stock in the company, which was formerly owned by Perkin-Elmer Corp and was backed by IBM Corp when it was spun off after Perkin-Elmer lost interest.
Italy’s state holding company says that it intends to sell off all of telecommunications company Societa Telefonica Finanziaria per Azioni pA, Stet, by the end of this year.
Electronic Data Systems Corp’s embryonic management consulting division is suffering growing pains: it is implementing a cost-control strategy after making a loss in 1994, unnamed company officials told the Wall Street Journal: lay-offs are not expected but hiring has stopped at the unit, which expanded its personnel to 1,500 from 300 last year; it won $200m in fees last year and sees $275m this.
Hyundai Electronics America Inc has completed its $300m purchase of NCR Microelectronics, Boulder Colorado from AT&T Corp and plans to call it Symbios Logic Inc: the company is expected to generate $550m this year from sales of its application-specific integrated circuits, application-specific standard products and high performance disk controller boards and storage subsystems. – o – Canadian long-distance operator Unitel Communications Inc is cutting its workforce by a quarter, 950 people in an effort to save $35m annually: the Toronto company is currently owned 48% by Canadian Pacific Ltd, 29.5% by Rogers Communications Inc, 22.5% by AT&T Corp.
Telecom Corp of New Zealand Ltd says it is willing to offer rival Clear Communications Ltd cost-based access to its local network, in order to end their dispute about how costs should be decided: the local residential service at the centre of the dispute is subsidised by toll and local business revenue as part of an agreement made with the
government when Telecom was privatised; Telecom says that it has offered Clear substantial reductions, including a 12.7% margin for peak rates and 20% off-peak on local business charges.
New York-based Information Builders Inc is developing its Focus 4GL for Digital Equipment Corp OSF/1 Alpha systems: Focus for Open Environment together with the Focus Reporter for Motif reporting system for the environment are priced at from $1,900 for a single-user licence.
British Gas Plc is buying #25.3m worth of CD-ROM drive notebook personal computers from Pansonic Personal Computer Co: service engineers will use them for on-site access to information on more than 4,000 appliances; later they will be able to receive job details remotely; and British Gas is spending #6m with Siemens Nixdorf Informationssysteme AG’s for hardware and software to equip two print and mail centres in Manchester and Northampton that will be able to print 750,000 bills day; Siemens Nixdorf will provide six 2240 High Speed Printers that will enable three-colour, continous print line.
It soars like a homesick angel, glides like a streamlined brick, they said of the German version of the Starfighter aircraft, which was so stuffed with unreliable add-on electronics that it claimed the lives of some 30 or more Luftwaffe pilots in the late 1960s, and that is the way most people think of bricks – solid but ungainly, good for building and as a crude weapon or doorstop, but not much else, so why did proud mother Ergo Computing Inc, Peabody, Massachusetts call its subnotebook offspring SubBrick? The company now has 50MHz 80486DX2 models and 75MHz models will ship in April; the 50MHz with 340Mb disk, 8Mb memory, 9.5 dual-scan colour display, a 14.4Kbps data and facsimile modem and a suite of Windows applications costs $2,600. – o – Figures – there’s nothing better to do with all those long, dark evenings – and mornings, and afternoons, and the rest of the world is a long way away: according to Associated Press, the European country with the largest Internet user base per head of population is Iceland.
AT&T Corp and 19 other international telecommunications operators are to invest $30m in a fibre optic cable that will traverse the Black Sea: the Kafos cable will be 340 miles long and is intended to improve international telecommunications between Turkey, Bulgaria and Romania when it is completed in 1996; Alcatel Submarine Networks will build and maintain the system. – o – Prodigy Services Co is working with Seattle FilmWorks Inc to offer a multimedia electronic mail service on Prodigy, so subscribers can send their photos and sound clips with text: the recipient will be able to see a picture of the person who sent it and hear a pre-recorded greeting in addition to the text; Seattle FilmWorks will develop rolls of 35mm film and digitise the photographs onto a floppy disk; users put the disk into their computers and send photos along with their mail, and can also make a customised sound clip; the service will launch in April, but initially will work only between Prodigy subscribers; a Windows computer is needed to send or view photos and a sound board will be needed to hear messages; those wanting to record messages will have to have a multimedia personal computer with that specific functionality built in.
Fujitsu Ltd and Tomen Corp jointly won a $200m contract to supply Globe Telecom of the Philippines with a 500,000-line digital communications system that includes ISDN-capable digital switching and digital radio transmission equipment.
ICL Plc has won a #2m three-year contract for its TeamOffice software from the Metropolitan Police Service in London, for 7,000 users.
Bell Atlantic Corp, Nynex Corp and Pacific Telesis Group Inc issued a joint request for proposals for digital television set-top equipment in an effort to get the price down by buying in very large bulk – the tender is for up to 4m boxes and associated software over five years; they must be based on an open and modular design so part
s can be easily changed or upgraded; the finalists are to be chosen by late spring, prototypes tested in the autumn, with volume delivery wanted for next year, and widespread deployment in 1996 and 1997.
Lawyers in the suit against Apple Computer Inc and others over alleged repetitive strain injuries caused by keyboards say Apple reached a settlement with the plaintiff, the details of which are being worked out: the case against IBM Corp continues; the eight-week jury trial is expected to end next week – IBM is potentially liable for punitive as well as compensatory damages because it allegedly knew of the problem and kept it quiet, while Apple was declared not liable for extra damages beyond its share of the $50,000 originally demanded.
Intel Corp’s 120MHz Pentium – with 60MHz external clock, is expected to be announced at the end of March but may be previewed in machines at CeBit in Hannover, Infoworld hears, adding that new 90MHz and 100MHz Pentiums for notebooks, dubbed P54LM, are set for late in the second quarter; internal voltages of 2.5V or 2.9V are expected; the company is also preparing a Peripheral Component Interconnect chip set for notebooks, the paper says.
The European Commission is looking into a proposed joint venture between units of Securicor Group Plc, the Achmea Group and the ING Group to provide vehicle tracking services in the Netherlands: the deal would unite Securicor International Ltd, Securicor Datatrak Ltd, Centraal Beheer Pensioenverzekering NV and Parcom Service BV and the Commission will either nod it through in a month or investigate further. – o – Radius Inc says it will begin shipping its clones of Apple Computer Inc’s Macintosh around June time.
Microsoft Corp is denying an assertion by Forrester Research Inc that Windows95 will either be delayed until November or will be missing some of the promised functionality if it ships in August: Forrester hears of problems with compatibility, Mail and the Microsoft Network.
In a humiliating climb-down, the Chinese government bowed to US pressure over intellectual property and signed an agreement to avert sanctions being imposed: Peking has already closed the Shenfei Laser & Optical System Co and the Zhuhai Special Economic Zone Audio-video Publishing House, identified as two of the worst piracy offenders; China also agreed to take steps to more strictly enforce its laws protecting copyrights, patents and trademarks and to open its courts to ensure that US copyright holders have access to them for redress; next stop is Indonesia, said to be another hotbed of copyright piracy.
The Pakistan government has cut off cellular telephone company Pakistan Mobile Communications Ltd, in which Motorola Inc has a majority stake, from access to the telephone system in Karachi it failed to satisfy concerns about its unscannable communications system: it was requested to provide technical interfaces or capabilities that would enable authorities to scan and eavesdrop on over-the-air cellular calls made by Mobilink customers, the company announced; the US is ironically lobbying for service to be restored, where internally it is battling to make sure that any encryption systems that are used in the US will still be crackable by the security services.
Reporting a year-on-year decline of 7.3% in second quarter turnover to the equivalent of $2.7m, Sand Technology Systems International Inc, Montreal, which markets Hitachi Ltd mainframes in Canada says the sales decline reflects competitive pricing action in the marketplace, plus the large quarterly swings in sales which are typical of its business, but adds that increased sales are unlikely in the current fiscal year, given existing market conditions, and it says it expects earnings to come under severe pressure in the second half.
France Telecom also wants to get an insight into Japan’s Personal Handy Phone system but it’s not going mad like Cable & Wireless Plc and taking 5% stakes in nine regional companies: it joined other shareholder
s in taking a stake of just 1% in Astel Kansai Ltd, which is building a system for Osaka, and will be the only foreign operating partner of the Japanese company; the state monopoly says it took the stake to gain a better insight into the Japanese portable telephone market.
Instead of meekly waiting for Microsoft Corp to send round the latest beta release of Windows95, Apple Computer Inc should have hopped on a plane to Hong Kong: according to the New York Times, it is being offered at the Golden Arcade Computer Center for about $40.
The UK cable television industry recorded its biggest ever rise in subscriptions in the final quarter of 1994, according to the Independent Television Commission, which said the number of broadband cable subscribers rose in the quarter by 130,000, taking the total to 909,043 for average penetration of 21.8%, down slightly from the 21.9% a year ago, but the number of homes passed is now 4,857,121 against 3,646,138 for this time last year; the number of cable telephone lines installed rose to 717,586 in the quarter from 314,381 a year ago.
There are now only four companies interested in stakes of 10% in Compagnie des Machines Bull SA, according to La Tribune Desfosses, which names NEC Corp, Motorola Inc, IPC Corp Ltd and Sequent Computer Systems Inc – and because NEC already has 4.3%, that is said to add up to little more than 35%, which would leave the state left with over 50% where it wanted a minority.
Reporting a year-on-year decline of 7.3% in second quarter turnover to the equivalent of $2.7m, Sand Technology Systems International Inc, Montreal, which markets Hitachi Ltd mainframes in Canada says the sales decline reflects competitive pricing action in the marketplace, plus the large quarterly swings in sales which are typical of its business, but adds that increased sales are unlikely in the current fiscal year, given existing market conditions, and it says it expects earnings to come under severe pressure in the second half.
France Telecom also wants to get an insight into Japan’s Personal Handy Phone system but it’s not going mad like Cable & Wireless Plc and taking 5% stakes in nine regional companies: it joined other shareholders in taking a stake of just 1% in Astel Kansai Ltd, which is building a system for Osaka, and will be the only foreign operating partner of the Japanese company; the state monopoly says it took the stake to gain a better insight into the Japanese portable telephone market.
There have long been suspicions that that was what the information superhighway was really all about, and now Ing C Olivetti & Co SpA chairman Carlo de Benedetti has come right out and said it – there are 6m teleworkers in the US, the Financial Times quotes him: with all those people working from home, there is more time now for sex.
