IBM Corp has been a model of obfuscation whenever the subject of the PowerPC 615 – the one with iAPX-86 emulation circuitry on board – comes up, admitting that it is an option, hinting that the thing has a lot less than full iAPX-86 circuitry on board, and going on to say it may never happen anyway – but now Apple Computer Inc appears to have blown the gaff, and according to MacWeek is strongly hinting in public that there will be a 615-based Mac one day soon; the paper adds that reliable sources say that prototype Macs based on the PowerPC 615 specifications already exist.
Shares of L M Ericsson Telefon AB have been making new highs in Stockholm on gossip about a big US Personal Communications Services contract and yesterday the Pacific Bell Mobile Services unit of Pacific Telesis Group Inc announced it had signed a $300m five-year pact with Ericsson for network equipment to provide wireless services in California and Nevada by early 1997.
Ahead of new offerings on the way, the fast-growing personal computer division of Hewlett-Packard Co yesterday reduced prices on its entire range of Omnibook 4000 advanced notebook computers by up to 20%, so that entry prices now start at $2,418: the move comes less than a week after Compaq Computer Corp cut prices by up to 19% on its discontinued Contura Aero ultra-portable notebook line; Hewlett-Packard also expanded its range of Omnibook 4000 models with new processors and larger disk drives – the new 75MHz 80486DX4-based models come with an 810Mb disk and will be available from June 1, the company promised.
Creative Technology Ltd announced a strategic partnership with a Singapore Telecom Ltd’s Telecom Equipment Pte Ltd unit to bring the latest multimedia telecommunications developments to the corporate and the consumer markets in Singapore.
German accounting is arcane and abstruse, but the Germans like it that way – and will no doubt try to foist it on the rest of the European Community in due course, and Mannesmann AG says it will not list its shares in New York as long as the US Securities & Exchange Commission declines to accept international accounting procedures that differ from the US Generally Accepted Accounting Practice rules, which mandate much greater transparency than do the German rules.
IBM Corp’s fledgling consultancy business has won a contract with Coca-Cola Co to help the Atlanta company and its customers to develop marketing and operations strategy: IBM will consult on areas such as building brand identities, new concept development, food marketing programmes and menu and beverage planning; IBM Foodservice Consultants work in conjunction with the resources of IBM’s Distribution Industry Consulting Group, which supports retailers and restaurants.
The first lawsuit claiming that cellular phones cause brain cancer has been thrown out by US District Judge Ralph Nimmons in Tampa, Florida, who said there was no credible scientific evidence to link them with health problems: David Reynard filed the lawsuit – against GTE Corp and NEC Corp – in January 1993, saying his wife had contracted brain cancer from a cell-phone.
Digital Equipment Corp president and chief executive Robert Palmer has now been elected the company’s first chairman since it went public back in 1966: Palmer will hold all the three top posts at the company.
Securicor 3net Ltd, the digital communications subsidiary of Securicor Communications Ltd has taken a 51% stake in Network Dynamics Ltd, based in Christchurch, New Zealand for an undisclosed sum: the firm, claiming to be the only designer, manufacturer and supplier of mutli-protocol local net routers in Australasia and will be renamed Securicor 3net (NZ) Ltd under the deal.
The Canadian Radio-television & Telecommunications Commission in Ottawa is recommending that telephone companies should be permitted to enter the cable television business as soon as inherent barriers to effective competition in local telephony are reduced; video-on-demand services should
be eligible for licensing as soon as non-preferential video-dial-tone tariffs are filed and approved, it said, but programming services should be produced and distributed by separate companies to prevent preferential access to distribution networks, and to ensure diversity and choice; structural separation would not be required for non-programming services such as on-line services, home banking, and Internet access.
Digital Equipment Corp claims it pre-sold 70 TurboLasers before the launch, and says it has now got 20 of the things away here in the UK.
Although Oracle Corp has been waving its cheque book in the direction of object-oriented database company Object Design Inc, offering to buy it for $200m (CI No 2,663), the Burlington, Massachusetts company knocked the offer back after discussions and says it intends instead to go public within the year.
Polaroid Corp is following the Eastman Kodak Co path to digital imaging, and is assembling a global salesforce dedicated solely to its electronic imaging business, reports Reuters’ Lori Valigra, in hopes of capturing at least a 10% share of a growing market it believes could total $5,000m by the year 2000: it will focus on electronic photography and electronic systems for niche markets such as photo ID cards with the aim of growing electronic imaging to 15% to 25% of total business by 2000.
Danish wire and electric cable manufacturer NKT Holding A/S has sold its Scanpoint Technology A/S unit to the San Diego-based Cubic Automatic Revenue Collection Group unit of Cubic Corp on undisclosed terms;Scanpoint, with sales of $129.7m in 1994, specialises in computerised public transport ticketing systems.
China’s second telecommunications network, United Telecommunications Corp, Unicom, will next month start cellular telephone services to 100,000 subscribers in four major cities – Peking, Shanghai, Tianjin and Guangzhou; Unicom is also laying its own lines in the four cities; it is also planning to build its own long-distance network, and looks for 30% of the cellular and 10% of the long-distance market by 2000; it is owned by the ministries of electric power, electronics and the railways and was set up as an rival to the Ministry of Posts & Telecommunications, which has been criticised for its slow service.
So how many vendors have qualified for the Unix 93 trademark? There are 10 vendors that comply – Sun Microsystems Inc, Compagnie des Machines Bull SA, Santa Cruz Operation Inc, Hewlett-Packard Co, Digital Equipment Corp, IBM Corp, AT&T Global Information Solutions, Novell Inc, Amdahl Corp and Siemens Nixdorf Informationssysteme AG; Unix 93 is of course the interim brand on the way to full Spec 1170 Unix 95, and to qualify for compliance an operating system must conform to XPG3 or XPG4, comply with System V Interface Definition 2 or 3, include a Novell licence and plan to go Unix 95 within a year.
Microsoft Corp says it expects Latin America to bring in $250m in revenues this year, up 35% from 1994: it is opening offices in Uruguay, Jamaica, Panama, Costa Rica and Guatemala; its regional revenues will rise sharply this year despite the crisis in Mexico.
