Northern Telecom Ltd has signed a joint venture contract with Liaoning Posts & Telecommunications Scientific Research Institute to build a Synchronous Digital Hierachy fibre-optic equipment manufacturing company in Shenyang, China: the new company, Shenyang Nortel Telecommunications Co Ltd will manufacture high capacity optical transmission systems for the Chinese market.
Digital Equipment Corp and Alcatel Alsthom SA have signed a non-exclusive co-operation deal to integrate DEC’s media server with Alcatel’s network switching equipment; Alcatel will also provide systems integration expertise; the two are involved in the Belgian video-on-demand trial where Apple Computer Inc is supplying the set-top boxes.
The state-owned Telephone Organisation of Thailand is considering a plan to sell off 51% of its equity within the next two years, Dow Jones & Co reported: it is seen likely to sell a strategic stake to a foreign telecommunications company and the only names on everyone’s lips are British Telecommunications Plc and AT&T Corp – and the fact that AT&T is a major equipment supplier in the country could count against it on conflict of interests grounds; such a privatisation is seen as bad news for the quoted TelecomAsia Corp, PCL and Thai Telephone & Telecommunications Ltd.
Commenting on its first quarter figures, Data General Corp says the period has traditionally been a weak quarter for the company but that it had nevertheless been able to record a year-over-year revenue increase of 8% and reduce its operating loss by nearly 50%, marking the fourth consecutive quarter in which total revenues have shown an increase over the comparable quarter of the prior year; it says its financial position remains strong – in the first quarter, it increased its cash position by more than $20m to $21m including the cash received from the settlement of litigation with Northrop Grumman Inc, it said.
Microsoft Corp shares fell $2.25 to $61.25 on Friday on nervousness over the hearings in the company’s anti-trust consent decree with the Justice Department – see page one.
Tampa, Florida-based Group Technologies Inc has licensed patented Ball Grid Array chip-packaging technology from Motorola Inc: the pin arrangement increases the number of connection pins that can emerge from an integrated circuit.
Cyrix Corp says internal testing and benchmarks for its M1 microprocessor have exceeded its early performance expectations: the company says it is modifying the current chip and expects to complete testing and have samples of the intended Pentium-killer available next month; the M1 is made in 0.5 micron CMOS technology from IBM Corp and SGS-Thomson Microelectronics NV; the company said it nearly quadrupled volume of Cx486DX2/66 microprocessor shipments in fourth quarter versus the third quarter.
With the official death toll from the Kobe earthquake up at 4,393 on Friday night, with 656 people still unaccounted for, Compaq Computer Corp said its two flat panel display suppliers in the Kobe region sustained no plant damage and Compaq anticipated no supply problems; and Mitsubishi Electric Corp reports has partially resumed operations at its cellular phone plant although its four other plants in Kobe remain closed because gas and water supplies are still cut off.
The Kobe University site on the Internet is alive with messages of support and offers of help in things like notifying relatives that individuals in the earthquake zone are safe, and Yokogawa Hewlett-Packard Ltd reports that it has been able to trace all 385 of its Kobe-based employees and satisfied itself that they are safe after Yokogawa Hewlett-Packard executives in Tokyo used voicemail to record a message asking employees to report their situation by leaving a message on voice mail.
IBM Corp has signed Kodak Imaging Services Inc to do global on-demand printing of IBM software manuals: under the planned multi-year arrangement with IBM Software Manufacturing Solutions, Kodak expects to print and assemble
up to 750m printed pages per year; on-site service will be provided at IBM sites in Copenhagen, Guadalajara, and Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania; no terms.
Commenting on its figures (page five), Skokie, Illinois-based US Robotics Inc said strong demand in North America and Europe for its high-speed modems and wide area network products helped drive its earnings to a record for its first quarter ended January 1; first-quarter operating expenses included $1.3m in non-recurring charges associated with its pending acquisition of Megahertz Holding Corp.
Those three former employees of IBM Corp have now been indicted on charges of stealing about 3,000 memory boards valued at more than $20m from the company: a White Plains, New York grand jury charged William Green, a former staffer in the power mechanical division, with allegedly requisitioning and then stealing 3090 memory boards from the company’s Kingston, New York facility in 1992, and his brother and Harold Jackman, with allegedly selling the stolen boards; IBM says the investigation is continuing. – o – Japanese trader Nichimen Corp and Nippon Telegraph & Telephone Corp have a $100,000 contract from the Turkmenistan government to lay 600 miles of fibre optic cables within the country as part of the trans-Eurasia telecommunications project connecting Shanghai with Frankfurt by a 10,625-mile optical cable. – o – Expanding on its big Brazilian adventure, AT&T Corp’s AT&T Global Information Solutions Brasil Ltda says that Monydata Ltda, where it has acquired an 80%-plus stake, is one of Brazil’s three leading personal computer manufacturers; Monydata president Felipe Gomez Perez will retain his interest in the company and remain as managing director; terms were not disclosed but the new AT&T Monydata S/A, which did $45m in 1993 and had made more than 100,000 personal computers by early 1994, will continue to offer its current line of products via existing distribution channels and maintain its two plants and employees, and provides a base for AT&T to sell into the Mercosur free trade agreement between Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay. – o – Computer Sciences Corp has a five-year facilities management contract worth $50m with the European division of ICI Paints Ltd, which wants to migrate from SAP AG’s R/2 on its own mainframes to BPCS running on distributed AS/400s at Computer Sciences facilities across Europe.
Hopkinton, Massachusetts-based EMC Corp reports that the number of Terabytes of Integrated Cached Disk Array-based Symmetrix shipped in 1994 were up over 250% and the installed base grew by over 260%.
Wang Laboratories Inc’s services business has been awarded a three-year contract by Minneapolis-based server manufacturer Tricord Systems Inc to provide software technical support to its customers in the US.
How did the Financial Times arrive at a figure of 78% for the increase in Apple Computer Inc’s first quarter profits when they in fact were up more than fourfold at $188m compared with $40m: unkind people are saying they must have done the sum using the calculator in Windows…
