According to Communications Daily, consultants at Jupiter Communications Inc have been running their spreadsheets over the Prodigy Systems Corp joint venture between IBM and Sears, Roebuck & Co, and are not impressed with what they see: they reportedly say the Prodigy viewdata service is not likely to recover its $500m investment for at least another 10 years, and that as now structured it does not work and that it is doubtful the modem-personal computer market is large enough to sustain the business over the long term; they suggest that the thing could have been launched for much less money – perhaps $85m.
