Commenting on its first quarter figures – sales up, profits down (CI No 1,412) – Amdahl Corp says that demand continues to be strong for its 5990 series of mainframes, and for its disk subsystems, and notes that during the quarter, it began delivering cache memory for its 6100 series of storage processors and shipped the first of its new 6110 solid-state storage devices, but that gross margins and earnings were lower than a year ago because of competitive pricing pressures that accelerated shortly after the first quarter of 1989 and because of a shift in product mix since then – in early 1989, the 5890 mainframes constituted the majority of shipments, while it is now delivering more 5990s, and although these have higher average selling prices but also inherently higher manufacturing costs because of their more complex technology; the company also says it is encouraged by a large number of sales to new customers during the quarter, continuing a trend from last year.
