Jim Collas, president of the Amiga subsidiary of Gateway Inc, has resigned for personal reasons it emerged yesterday. Collas only joined the company at the beginning of this year. He is being replaced by Tom Schmidt, who was appointed as Amiga’s vice president and chief operating officer in May. Collas left his job as Gateway’s senior vice president of new products to head up the Amiga division at the start of the year. Separately this week, Collas registered to sell 118,000 shares of Gateway common stock.
Last month, Amiga said it planned to pitch its new systems at the internet appliance market, and revealed that it would use a stripped-down version of the Linux operating system for a multimedia convergence computer, a broadband hub and a webpad. Development was still in the early stages, it said. Gateway acquired Amiga Technologies GmbH in 1997, paying around $13m for access to the company’s 47 patents. By Gateway appears not to have been able to decide what to do with its purchase. Plans for a new multimedia operating system scheduled to emerge in 1998 were scrapped.
Amiga watchers report that the division has posted at least 17 new patent applications this year. They range from system for combining electronic program guide data through to internet source into TV program database, a channel tuner for television and event time shifting for convergence system.
