Honeywell Bull Inc has ignored its 42.5% shareholder Bull SA’s own Data view-designed, Japanese-built Attache offering for the lap-top MS-DOS microcomputer market and has instead signed with Zenith Data Systems for 10,000 of its new SupersPort family, worth $60m. The business could grow to three times that amount over three years because the primary customer for the machines is Honeywell DPS 8000 user Metropolitan Life, which wants 30,000 of the machines over three years, and after a play-off, specified the Zenith machines. But under the agreement, Honeywell Bull is not permitted to market the machines to other US customers, but its UK and Italian subsidiaries, Honeywell Bull Ltd and Honeywell Bull Italia, can and will: according to Agence France Presse, the Zenith plant in Ireland is already turning out SupersPorts with Honeywell Bull badges on them for the UK and Italian firms. Bull commented that the product harmonisation committees set up to decide future strategies for itself and its 42.5% affiliate had not yet got around to doing lap-tops.
