June 4 was a big day for Individual Computer Products International. That was when the European company unveiled its Ambra line of IBM AT clones for sale in England. Prices were average for a clone without a big name. For instance, the Sprinta model, a 25MHz 80386SX machine with 2Mb of memory and a 40Mb disk drive lists for UKP885, which includes MS-DOS and Windows. This is about 1,600 simoleons American. Because there is great competition among airlines on transatlantic routes and at least five hours time difference, the same machine can be shipped to Canada and sold for only $1,600 Canadian by an IBM marketing subsidiary called ExperComp Services Inc. The Canadian price of the Ambra is equivalent to 1,325 simoleons American or 17% less than the British price. IBM UK sells for UKP3,173 a PS/2 called the model 57 SLC. It has a similar chip for a brain and comes with 8Mb of memory, an 80Mb disk and OS/2. This machine is made in Scotland where IBM has a personal computer factory that IBM vice-president James Cannavino says is very efficient. Describing the Scottish computer works, Cannavino used a phrase famous at IBM at least since the days of John Opel’s chairmanship: low-cost producer. The British price is about 5,700 simoleons American, or 38% more than the $4,130 it lists for in America, where it apparently can be made cheaper.

Individualist

In Canada, where it is not made, this PS/2 lists for $4,910 Canadian or 4,175 simoleons American. The company that makes the Ambra machines is owned by IBM and run by executives who until recently worked for IBM, which can be said about quite a few people these days. ICPI will have only 35 employees, so if it goes down the drain anyone who says until recently they used to work for ICPI will feel more like rugged individualists… or at least like individualists. The company doesn’t need too many employees because all the pieces of its machines are made by other companies and assembled by subcontractors. Why IBM has set up a clone company is a mystery. IBM was already selling AT clones called PS/1s and low-powered PS/2s that closely resemble ATs. But after years of saying it is the industry’s low-cost producer, IBM must have been surprised to find out that some Taiwanese industrialists are lower-cost producers. The Taiwanese that IBM’s ICPI turned to can make machines that are very similar to IBM’s… and can make a profit because they are so very clever. Instead of building a plant where tireless robots assemble computers and never gripe about their bosses, eat lunch or complain about working conditions, the Taiwanese resort to the use of skilled labour. This is an unfair tactic and in time they will undoubtedly be punished for hiring rather than firing people the way IBM does, but the Taiwanese method has one small advantage: it makes money. IBM’s customers in the United States can’t get Ambra brand computers yet, although this might not be the case if you live in Detroit. Anyone who lives in Detroit can go south across the river to Canada and buy an Ambra and at the same time smuggle some fine Cuban cigars back through customs. Personally, we think the cigars would be the better part of the bargain.

By Hesh Wiener

Those who don’t prefer cigars can wait until September, when Ambra-type clones may appear in America as IBM’s PS Classic computers. (IBM missed a marketing opportunity in socially traditional Europe by not naming its ICPI products the Low Classic, Middle Classic and Upper Classic models. But ICPI doesn’t feel compelled to copy Apple, which sells a computer called the Mac Classic. Apple, run by an ex-Pepsican, obviously got its inspiration from Coke Classic, which was what Coca-Cola got named after a supposed improved version got an unsatisfactory market reception bearing uncanny resemblance to that accorded the PS/2 line). We use personal computers and we don’t understand why anyone who wants to run Windows would buy a machine with a 80386SX brain, except by mistake. We use Windows every day; it will not run satisfactorily on a machine that slow, whether the name

plate says Ambra, PS/1 or PS/2. Even though an Ambra machine doesn’t say IBM, people who buy one will know where it comes from, if for no other reason than every outfit selling them will make a point of it. We think the whole business will fizzle unless ICPI products are as good as any in the market, which so far they are not. By the fourth quarter of this year, every serious end user will think of a full 33MHz 80486 as a base machine. All the progress is dandy, but only for the progressive club of personal computer vendors, of which ICPI, to say nothing of IBM itself, is not necessarily a card carrying member. Nonetheless, ICPI, whether winner or loser, has stumbled across the idea driving the market (and telling IBM to get out and walk): Customers want cheap machines. If ICPI’s leaders can bring themselves to apply this concept outside the personal computer market, they could eventually become the heroes of the customer base. The company would also have a much better chance of success. The clone world is run by a bunch of 25-year-old maniacs, and this is no place for IBM executives who, depending on whether they are still working for their original employer, are in their late prime or twilight and complacent to boot. The only thing such old-timers are much better at than young whippersnappers is treachery. It won’t work. But ICPI may wake up to a fantastic opportunity. Instead of going to Taiwan or Hong Kong or Singapore for cheap motherboards, monitors and mice, they should veer north to Japan. There they would find companies able to make the cheap clones that customers clamour for: affordable copies of IBM mainframes. Hitachi, we are confident, would be thrilled to have IBM help sell its large processors; the company’s deal whereby IBM sells its laser printers has apparently been rewarding to both parties.

NT on the mainframe

To engender the greatest possible competition among computer component suppliers, ICPI would have to consult Fujitsu, too. The result could well be clone mainframes – they could call them S/370 Classics – at half IBM’s price. Mainframe customers could use S/370 Classics until they saved up enough scratch to buy the real thing, which will come with the revered IBM logo and maybe an extra coat of paint. If ICPI wanted to compete more aggressively, the company could take advantage of all the industry’s most efficient parts suppliers. For example, the clone maker could buy remanufactured IBM memory boards and put them under its own label rather than IBM’s. Or it could use all Toshiba memory, the way IBM does on its 9121s to save money. If ICPI played its cards right, it might even be able to persuade Microsoft to put Windows NT up on its clone mainframes. Not only would this finally give customers a fighting chance to get personal computers and mainframes to co-operate, but it might distract Bill Gates long enough to keep him from buying Digital Equipment Corp and taking over the world. Instead, Gates could buy ICPI and take over the world. Which would at least give IBM’s shareholders something when, as we all expect, Gates eventually takes over the world.

Copyright (C) 1992 Technology News of America Co Inc