The lousy year the company sees in prospect and the indifferent results for the past two years are apparently the reason that John Carlson retired as chief executive of Cray Research Inc on December 31 after two years in the job – I am not satisfied with our results for the past two years and have reluctantly concluded that I should turn over responsibility to new leadership, Bloomberg Business News quotes him as saying; he took over when President Clinton tapped his predecessor John Rollwagen to join his Administration, an appointment that got bogged down in so much controversy that he never took up the post; Robert Ewald, chief operating officer, adds the title of president and Cray is looking for a new chairman and chief executive.
L M Ericsson Telefon AB’s Hong Kong division has signed a $44m contract with Jiangsu Machinery Import and Export Corporation for the expansion of the analogue mobile cellular network in the same-named province: equipment and services will be suppplied to 11 cities.
Motorola Inc reports a $45m contract to supply analogue cellular equipment to China’s Liaoning Provinceto replace of one of its existing analogue systems with Total Access Communications System-based cell sites and EMX2500E mobile switch equipment; the first phase is designed to support 125,000 subscribers; Motorola also said it opened a cellular switching network support and maintenance group in China with DSC Communications Corp.
LSI Logic Corp’s offer to buy out the 45% minority in LSI Logic Corp of Canada for $Can3.30 a share – against a flotation price in 1987 of $Can7.50 – has hit trouble with a US shareholder in the Canadian arm bringing a lawsuit against LSI.
Dassault Electronique SA, Giat Industries, Sagem SA and Cap Gemini Sogeti SA’s artificial intelligence division, ITMI-Aptor, have formed a Groupement d’Interets Economique alliance, GIE Syrano, to develop mobile robotics for the battlefield: it already has a contract from the French Defence Procurement Agency to develop Syrano, Systeme Robotise d’Acquistion pour la Neutralisation d’Objectifs, or a robot that destroys targets; the prototype is an unmanned vehicle with sensors that is linked to a control station from which it is controlled; Dassault Electronique will develop the mission and communication modules; Giat Industries the robot; Sagem the control station; and ITMI-Aptor will create the vision and image processing software.
The first IBM Corp SP2 PowerParallel installed in eastern Europe has gone to the Department of Theoretical Chemistry at Budapest in Hungary; it is a seven-node machine.
Cable & Wireless Plc has renewed the agreement under which it provides management, technical services and trademarks to its 57.5%-owned affiliate Hong Kong Telecommunications Ltd, but the latter says it expects to pay significantly less under the new arrangement than the $39.5m it paid for the year to March 31 1994; the royalties to be paid for licensed trademarks are 8% of relevant revenues.
Informix Software Inc and San Diego-based Excalibur Technologies Corp signed a joint development and worldwide distribution agreement under which Excalibur will provide its Text Retrieval Library and the Excalibur XRS Image and Signal Server technology to users of the Informix OnLine Dynamic Server.
USA Mobile Communications Inc, Cincinnati, has completed its acquisition of Premiere Page Inc, but Metrocall Inc, Alexandria, Virginia has withdrawn its best and final offer for the two companies, saying that it was not prepared to pay a double premium for Premiere Page.
The Comdisco Electronics Group unit of Comdisco Inc is joining forces with VSM Corp to help it rebuild and remarket diffusion furnaces and chemical vapour deposition equipment used in semiconductor fabrication: VSM and Comdisco will jointly identify used equipment on the open market, Comdisco will buy it and VSM will remanufacture the systems at its Tempe, Arizona facility and the equipment will be sold or leased by Comdisco, with
VSM providing after-sales support and warranty.
Volkswagen AG has ordered Digital Equipment Corp’s LinkWorks software for company-wide workgroup applications: VW Gedas, the automaker’s network services subsidiary, and DEC have also signed an agreement to market LinkWorks under the product name Synergy for Windows.
Cray Research Inc has an order for a Superserver 6400 from Samsung Electronics Co Ltd of Seoul, South Korea: it will be used for advanced telecommunications reearch in switching design; terms were not given.
LenBell, a Russian joint venture in which Alcatel NV’s Belgian Alcatel Bell unit has a stake, inaugurated a new local telephone exchange in the central city of Voronezh: the Alcatel 1000 S-12 digital exchange has a capacity of 10,000 numbers.
L M Ericsson Telefon AB has been awarded an $86m contract from national operator Sri Lanka Telecom for turnkey telecommunications networks including the AXE exchange, transmission and outside plant in eight different areas around the island.
It attracted almost no comment because commentators are not much interested in amusement arcades full of electronic games machines, and the fact that the UK is a – if not the – world leader in writing games software is, like Britain’s pre-eminence in motor racing technology, a great national unsung story, but Chancellor Kenneth Clarke introduced a really mean little tax when he said that from next November he would impose a levy on arcade games, especially as it will raise only ú30m: now Sega Enterprises Ltd is considering pulling part of its operations out of the UK unless the government scraps plans for the new tax; the president of Sega Japan has written to the chief of the Board of Trade expressing his concern about the tax, saying it will rec onsider manufacturing, distribution and amusement centre plans – which include that big Segaland in Bournemouth; the Chancellor announced the new tax in his budget, and it is due to take effect from next November.
Melville, New York-based Arrow Electronics Inc has signed up Lite-On Inc, a member of the Lite-On Group, to form a joint venture company to distribute electronic components throughout Asia: headquartered in Taipei, the Lite-On electronics distribution business serves Taiwan, Korea, Singapore, and Malaysia; Arrow will have a 45% stake in the planned joint venture company.
Emeryville, California-based Sybase Inc has acquired the assets of its former distributors in Australia and New Zealand and converted them into company-owned distribution subsidiaries; Sybase says it expects to double its market share in Australia in the next two years.
MCI Communications Corp’s MCI Metro has filed an application to provide competitive local telephone service in Connecticut and is also seeking the right to offer local phone service in Ohio and in Oregon; it expects to begin service by 1996.
Lincolnshire, Illinois-based SoftNet Systems Inc has agreement in principle to buy Kansas Communications Inc for about $8.1m in shares: Kansas Communications distributes business telecommunications products, mainly in Kansas and Missouri and is also is an interconnect provider, serving as an agent for MCI Communications Inc and Southwestern Bell Corp, doing $441,000 net on sales of $8m in the year to March.
Omaha, Nebraska-based MFS Communications Co Inc is applying to the Public Utility Commission of Ohio for a licence for its MFS Intelenet Inc to provide the full range of basic local exchange services in the service territories of Ameritech Corp and Cincinnati Bell Inc, including the Columbus, Cleveland and Cincinnati metropolitan areas.
SHL Systemhouse Inc has sold its UM20 credit card processing software business to Stratus Computer Inc for an undisclosed sum: the business was part of AST Transact Ltd, bought by SHL two years ago.
Hewlett-Packard Co has cut the price of its DeskJet 1200C and DeskJet 1200C/PS colour printers by over 25%: the DeskJet 1200C is now $1,250 and the DeskJet 1
200C/PS is reduced to $2,000; the PostScript upgrade for the DeskJet 1200C printer will remain the same at $730.
Samsung Electronics Co reckons it has the jump on all the other memory chip makers, having shipped the first batch of 64M-bit parts to IBM Corp in the US, Agence France Presse reports from Seoul; NEC Corp expects to begin volume manufacture of 64Ms in April; Samsung says it has orders from IBM, Hewlett-Packard Co and other US computer majors, and plans to increase production of the new parts to 1m a month in the latter half of the year.
Fourth-quarter US personal computer shipments soared 32% from the 1993 figure to a record 5.8m units, according to International Data Corp, which says Compaq Computer Corp saw a soaring 56% increase in unit sales worldwide in 1994, bouncing IBM Corp into second place; Apple Computer Inc was third and Packard Bell Electronics Inc came fourth; worldwide shipments overall grew 27% last year to 48.5m units, the Framingham researcher estimates.
Taiwan produced $11,580m worth of computer hardware in 1994, 19.5% more than in 1993, to replace Britain as the world’s fourth largest producer, said the Institute for Information Industry: Taiwan was the fifth largest in 1993, with $9,690m output; the figure excludes overseas production by Taiwan makers, which is expected to grow 77.6% to $3,000m; orders received by local makers indicated that computer hardware production should grow by at least 13.5% in 1995 to $13,140m; it expects Taiwan to produce 5.2m personal computers worth $4,300m, a 43% rise, in 1994.
Farnell Electronics Plc has sold its majority stake in automatic vehicle location systems maker Terrafix to Land Navigation Systems Ltd and the sale will result in a charge of about ú1.3m against Farnell’s figures, which mainly represents goodwill that arose on the original acquisition several years ago; Terrafix has ú500,000 annual sales and net assets of ú350,000.
City gossip has Cable & Wireless Plc splitting Mercury Communications Ltd into two companies, one for services, the other to own and operate the basic network: the suggestion is that AT&T Corp might buy a 30% stake in the network company; BCE Inc, the former Bell Canada, already holds a 20% stake in the entire Mercury Communications Ltd.
Plans by Compagnie des Machines Bull SA and Cisi SA to combine their management information systems offerings in a new company, Athesa France, have fallen apart: Cisi says that although it set up Athesa France, Bull did not bring any assets to the company, and instead worked on its own operation.
Japan’s personal computer market expanded 30% in 1994 and will continue to grow rapidly says Dataquest: it said shipments of new personal computers in Japan will total about 3.21m units in 1994, up 30% on 1993; shipments rose just 10% between 1990 and 1993; Dataquest attributed the improvement to lower prices, the spread of the DOS/V AT standard, Japan’s recovering economy, and a growing interest in networks; Dataquest predicted growth will continue at a 20% a year over the next four years, due in part to the emergence multimedia computers that feature video, fascimile and CD-ROM capabilities.
Time Warner Inc declined comment on a Wall Street Journal report that it is near a deal with US West Inc and two Japanese companies, Itochu Corp and Toshiba Corp on forming a $400m joint venture to develop cable television systems in Japan.
Ing C Olivetti & Co SpA is to sell its 53.9% stake in Italian economic news agency Radiocor-Telerate to the Il Sole 24 Ore group; the balance is held by Dow Jones Telerate Holding Inc; Radiocor has 10,000 terminals now installed in Italy.
Thorn EMI Plc conditionally agreed the sale of the defence group of its Thorn EMI Electronics unit to Thomson-CSF SA for ú15m in cash; the 970 employee group being sold is engaged mainly in missile and ordnance and electro-optical activities and accounts for about 40% of Thorn EMI Electronics’s sales.
GTE Corp has won agreement for
its offer to buy out the 10% minority in Contel Cellular Inc after raising its offer for the Class A common to $25.50 a share from $22.50.
Micron Technology Inc, Boise, Idaho is quite happy to keep its major plants miles off the beaten high-tech track and has narrowed the list of cities it is considering for its planned new $1,300m chip plant from 300 to 13: it is considering two further sites in Boise and three other towns in Idaho, Coeur d’Alene, Twin Falls and Nampa make the list; the others are South Bend, Indiana; Davenport and Waterloo, Iowa; Butte, Montana; Omaha, Nebraska; Oklahoma City; Payson, Utah; Lacey, Washington, and Richland, also in Washington.
Conner Peripherals Inc reports that it has received a notice from the US Internal Revenue Service assessing about $43m in additional taxes, plus interest, for the 1989 and 1990 tax years – the taxman has proposed total income adjustments of about $130m but Conner says it believes it has meritorious defences to the claims and will submit a petition to the US Tax Court contesting the matter – but anyway it believes the outcome of the litigation will not have material effect on the financial position or financial results of the company.
AirTouch Communications Inc has an option to buy an indirect stake in VimpelCom, a cellular company serving Moscow, from FGI Wireless Ltd.
IBM Corp says it has shipped 1,000 of its Ramac disk arrays since the first one went out in September.
The European Commission is using its controversial trust-busting powers to mandate a lifting of the restrictions on the use of cable television networks to deliver telecommunications services: as a result, new multimedia communication services will be able to use cable television networks in 1996.
Personal computer software salesslumped 20% in the third quarter of 1994 to $307m, compared to the same period in 1993, in Western Europe.
Still time to enter the Christmas Competitiongram: the best entry received so far leaves anyone knowing 18 to 20 of the answers in with a good chance for the big prize.
Correction: that Latin American and Caribbean telecommunications holding company in which Societa Finanziaria Telefonica per Azioni, Stet SpA, plans to buy 25%, seems to be called Impsat Corp (CI No 2,571).
Is the brave new world of the Internet really all it’s cracked up to be? An Associated Press piece on Internet New Year parties opens You don’t need an invitation, you don’t need a date and you can drink as much virtual champagne as you want and still wake up without a headache… We’ll sit this one out.
