Amdahl Corp shares fell 75 cents to $19.50 against the trend of a bouncing market Wednesday, and the decline was put down to growing worries that if the talk of Electronic Data Systems Corp taking a large shareholding and management control of the National Advanced Systems arm of National Semiconductor Corp in the US (CI No 1,085), while it will be very bad news indeed for IBM, such a new strong competitor would also pose a threat to Amdahl Corp’s business. The threat to Amdahl should in fact be confined largely to the business that Electronic Data currently does with the 46%-owned affiliate of Fujitsu – and there could be some counter-benefit to Amdahl to the extent that EDS pushing the Hitachi machines makes the concept of using compatible mainframes more respectable. Either way, any such move by the General Motors Corp subsidiary would be very bad news for IBM, which makes substantial sales to EDS.
