While Amdahl Corp saw a modest increase in sales accompanied by a 40% drop in profits, its Amdahl Deutschland GmbH subsidiary has turned in record figures for 1989, with turnover up a massive 132% to $177m, reports Computerwoche. Until 1989, the best year for the Munichbased arm of the Sunnyvale, California IBMulator had been 1987 with sales of $108m, which then fell to $76.5m in 1988. 1989 is the first year sales have surpassed DM300m but Amdahl Deutschland chief Hans Reihl would not be drawn on profits for the year, implying only that they had not increased at the same rate as sales. Processors accounted for 69.7% of turnover, while 13.3% came from disk systems and other peripherals, 14.9% from support and training, and 2.2% from remote data processing services. Amdahl installed 57 IBM 3090type mainframes in 1989, against 42 the year before, giving the company around 6% of the West German market, compared to IBM’s 70% share. Reihl was, however, disappointed with the performance of Amdahl’s disk systems, saying that underestimations of European demand had led to supply shortages. For 1990, Reihl first objective is to increase Amdahl’s Unix activities, and he claims to have already received four orders for UTS Unix mainframes; Amdahl Deutschland is looking particularly keenly at the German government sector.
