Thin client manufacturer Network Computer Devices Inc saw its revenues rise quarter on quarter for the first time since early 1997 yesterday. Although the sales, at $26m, were actually 25% less than the year ago quarter, the results were an improvement on the previous quarter’s $22.7m. Announcing the results, Robert Gilbertson, president and CEO said that NCD has begun its transition from a pure X terminal company to a company with a complete suite of hardware and software products to provide connectivity to multiple servers. He said the year-over-year revenue decline was primarily caused by the expected drop off in sales of Unix-based x terminals and associated software, but following the launch of its new Windows-based terminal solutions, hardware revenues at least were starting to look a little brighter. The quarter saw a doubling of units shipped from 16,500 to well over 32,000, he said, and sales to IBM increased dramatically to, 20,000, over the quarter. He added that the first 4,000 units of the new NCD ThinSTAR 200 were delivered during the last few weeks of the quarter, and that the design wins they represented should mean increased volumes in future periods. But while hardware revenues grew by 40% quarter to quarter, software sales dropped by 30%. NCD’s CFO, Rudy Morin attributed the downturn to the company’s reduction in its WinCentre Pro offerings with no revenue to offset it from the new software products announced last week. He also pointed to a reduction in NCD’s OEM relationship with Citrix on its Windows NT 3.5 product to a provider of value add for the product as another contributory factor. The market transition to Citrix MetaFrame 4.0 from WinFrame 3.5, coupled with the concurrent launch of Windows NT 4.0, also served to slow sales down, he said. NCD hopes this week’s launch of its ThinSTAR Plus and ThinSTAR load balancing software suites will begin to bear fruit in the fourth quarter. It’s also counting on newly-signed deals with Sequent Computer Systems Inc, Dell Computer Corp and health care IT supplier HBOC to help sell its hardware and software going forward.
