Only a week after IBM Entry Systems president William Lowe declared that IBM was looking for OEM contracts in Europe for the Personal System/2 and its components (CI No 882), Ferranti International Plc in the UK and Ricoh Co have become the first companies to announce that they have signed OEM agreements with IBM on the product. Ferranti Computer Systems Ltd, Wythenshawe, Manchester, says that it will aban don attempts to clone the IBM box and will instead sell members of the PS/2 family as the Ferranti IS2000. Ferranti will continue to make its own low-end MS-DOS mach ines. The value of its OEM contr act with IBM UK was not revealed. Ricoh Co Ltd of Tokyo says that it will start marketing three PS/2 models and two larger machines, be lieved to be IBM System 36s, under the Ricoh name from next month. The three Ricoh PS personal comput ers – likely the Models 50, 60 and 80 – will sell for $4,950, $5,600 and $7,900 respectively, while the two machines that sound like 36s will be offered as the Ricoh I ser ies, at from $26,000 and $43,600. Again the value of the OEM contract with IBM Japan was not disclosed.
