Apple Computer Inc expects the Asian market to bring it more business than the US in a year or two, and plans to invest large sums of money during the next three to five years to make sure it does, John Floisand, senior vice-president responsible for Asia, Canada and Latin America told the Wall Street Journal: Apple’s investments will focus on China, India, South Korea and Japan, along with Mexico and Brazil in Latin America; an important element in the strategy involves investing in its Singapore-based operations – We see Singapore becoming a very powerful hub in the Asian region, he said, not only from the manufacturing and distribution standpoint, but from an information and financial standpoint; Singapore research receives about 30% of Apple funds for doing computers for entry level consumers.
Post & Telecommunications Minister Wolfgang Btsch is in Washington today to explain Germany’s plan to liberalise the telecommunications market – but not until 1998, and lobby for Deutsche Telekom AG to be allowed to buy its stake in Sprint Corp: the answer that he gets likely to be yes, but not until 1998.
Wang Laboratories Inc is still not out of the woods, and warns that it expects a substantial net loss for both the third quarter and the fiscal year ending June 30: the loss is due to charges, totalling about $65m which will be taken in the third quarter for integration and consolidation initiatives costing a total of $75m related to Wang’s acquisition of those Compagnie des Machines Bull SA businesses; Wang sees a reduction of costs and expenses by about $85m a year.
Le Groupe Videotron Ltee and IBM Corp have ended the alliance under which they were to develop the television set-top box for the first phase of the UBI home electronic highway, Videotron said, and the latter’s Videoway division will now assume full responsibility to complete the development and supply the set-top boxes for the UBI Consortium (CI No 2,373); the two will continue to work closely with the UBI Consortium for the completion of the UBI transactional server. – o – Tandy Corp completed the sale of its credit card portfolios, and expects total proceeds of $650m.
Palo Alto-based Electronic Arts Inc expects to follow Microsoft Corp in teaming with a Hollywood studio on creation of entertainment software.
There was a ripe collection of reactions to the US Federal Communications Commission’s plan to cap the access charges local phone companies can demand of long-distance carriers: Bell Atlantic Corp says it plans to take the Commission to court to appeal the plan; Ameritech Corp said that the ruling won’t have a significant impact on it; Nynex Corp said the decision would more likely lead to higher profits for long distance carriers than lower rates for users; Pacific Telesis Group Inc expressed disappointment that regulators failed to abandon their rate of return mentality; US West Inc said the decision presents an element of uncertainty and would have preferred that the agency reach a longer-term decision on the rules; the United States Telephone Association trade group for the local telephone industry decried the decision as one-sided and deeply discouraging, saying it would simply line the pockets of long-distance carriers; AT&T Corp called the decision a step in the right direction but said it does not go far enough to cut access charges; GTE Corp said the price caps would have relatively little near-term impact on its revenues; analysts said that the changes looked neutral to slightly negative for the regional Bells and positive for long distance firms; and the Commission estimated that the new rules would reduce the access charges by about $940m a year.
The second phase of the Cambridge Interactive Television Trial was officially launched on Friday when the ICL Plc PimServer, Parallel Interactive Media Server, was switched on: it can serve up to 7,000 homes, 2,000 concurrently; by the end of 1995 there are to be 250 homes participating in the trial.
DSP Group Inc sa
ys it has been granted a preliminary injunction against Rockwell International Corp by a Santa Clara County Superior Court judge prohibiting Rockwell from granting royalty-free licences for its DigiTalk speech compression and decompression technology until further order of the court; the plaintiff says it believes that Rockwell is engaging in an unlawful conspiracy to restrain trade in the digital speech compression market.
A federal judge has denied a request by Apple Computer Inc for a preliminary injunction against Microsoft Corp’s continued shipment of its Video for Windows version 1.1d.
British Telecommunications Plc has proposed to the Office of Telecommunications six suggestions for regulation changes: more open interconnection arrangements; improved interconnection pricing and costing; freedom to rebalance its prices; removal of the need for access deficit conditions used in calculating interconnection charges; definition and funding of universal service, or the extension of existing and new telephony services to all the population; and removal of the retail price cap from 1997.
Thorn-EMI Plc says it will see a pre-tax exceptional loss of around #32m from the sale of its sensors division to Racal Electronics Plc: Racal Defence Radar Ltd is paying #17.5m cash for the Thorn business.
Interdigital Communications Corp attorneys told Reuters they will file for a mistrial following last week’s jury decision that Motorola Inc did not infringe four Interdigital patents for digital phones; the company’s shares plunged by $6.25 to $5.25 on the jury verdict – despite the news that the company has entered into royalty-bearing licence deals with Hitachi Ltd and its Kokusai Electric Co Ltd unit for manufacture, use and sale of subscriber cellular telephone units and infrastructure equipment based on Time Division Multiple Access technology; it gets a royalty advance of about $3.5m and additional royalties on various types of digital wireless telephones, including those built in accordance with the phone standards IS-55, IS-136, GSM, DCS-1800 1900, PDC and PHS and PHS.
The Czech government now plans to complete its tender for a 27% stake in SPT Telecom as by the start of June: bids under consideration come from Bell Atlantic Corp with France Telecom; Ameritech Corp with Deutsche Telekom AG; Tele Danmark A/S; STET SpA; and Koninklijke PTT Nederland NV with the Swiss PTT.
Lincoln Telecommunications Co Inc, Lincoln, Nebraska now has definitive agreement to acquire the 84% of Nebraska Cellular Telephone Corp it doesn’t already own, paying cash and shares to total value of $130m.
Sun Microsystems Inc employees are used to shocks from their cheerfully outrageous chief executive, Scott McNealy, but they were a bit non-plussed on Saturday when a message from the boss advised I think it is crucial at this moment in Sun history that we take a hard look at our dress code – are jeans and Hawaiian shirts really appropriate for representatives of a $5 billion company? and directed them to a image on their computers of the new dress code, which showed McNealy in tuxedo – and tennis shoes, with paper clip cufflinks.
