Philips NV yesterday committed to bringing its information systems division back into profit by 1992, but the moves will require drastic surgery, and the company is going to phase out most hardware manufacturing and development. As a first step, 210 of the 700 people at its Dutch computer division in Apeldoorn are to go, but in the longer term it will buy in much of what it now makes, which suggests that personal computer manufacturing will be the first to go. The company says that it has not yet decided on the future of the P9000 Unix family currently it consists of Intel APX-86 family-based models at the bottom, 68030 models – with 68040 ones planned – in the middle, and Edgcore-based 68020-compatible models at the top. It had been considering a move to the Motorola 88000 RISC: now any such move is likely to be via bought-in product as its switches its research and development effort over to systems integration and vertical market applications development. The proprietary P4000, which competes in the IBM System 36 market, is likely to go.
