Hewlett-Packard Co is not a company to rush into something just because it is the fashion, but with ICL Plc firmly in the Sparc camp, Groupe Bull SA committed to IBM Corp’s Power RISC and Ing C Olivetti & Co SpA’s allegiance to the Alpha RISC bought dearly by Digital Equipment Corp – with Hewlett an unsuccessful contender in both the last two cases, the company may well be beginning to think that persuading Siemens-Nixdorf Informationssysteme AG of the virtues of the Precision Architecture RISC is a high priority if it is to be seen to have equal standing with its three closest rivals in Europe; following the painful and not yet complete absorption of Nixdorf, Siemens’ product line is a mishmash of iAPX-86, 68000 family and MIPS Computer Systems Inc R-series processors, and Siemens fabricates the R-series, but the company also had a long-standing OEM relationship with Apollo Computer Inc that continued after that company was acquired by Hewlett-Packard, Siemens is keen to add more logic devices to its semiconductor line, and Hewlett has few licensees fabricating Precision Architecture – and several US chipmakers fabricate more than one RISC family; having just mopped up the minority in Siemens-Nixdorf, would Siemens be ready to admit a new investor into the company? Well the money would be very welcome at a company that is again finding that computers are a gurgling cash drain, and a single outside investor is very different matter to a host of fractious small shareholders and institutional investors; before doing any deal, Hewlett-Packard would have to weigh whether it would gain more from what would effectively be privileged access to Siemens’ customers than it would lose in self-impact on its already strong position in western Germany.
