Unions at Ing C Olivetti & Co SpA say they are worried about the prospects of further job cuts at the loss-making company: Il Mondo said this week Olivetti is planning a further round of 3,000 lay-offs and that they will extend beyond the troubled personal computer business – Olivetti is preparing itself for a fresh crisis; all the signs we’ve had from the company indicate that the crisis isn’t yet over, said Giorgio Cremaschi, regional leader of the largest union at Olivetti; We’re facing the paradoxical situation where demand for personal computers is rising but Olivetti is not capable of tapping into this growth, he told Reuters.
AT&T Corp says it will urge US regulators to deny approval of the planned Sprint Corp European alliance unless France and Germany open their communications markets to competitors first: We believe that the price of entry has to be the reality of competition, not just the promise of it, Victor Pelson, head of AT&T’s global operations team said yesterday; AT&T plans to file its views with the Federal Communications Commission on Friday, the deadline for commenting on Sprint’s final agreement to sell a 20% equity stake to Deutsche Telekom AG and France Telecom – Without reciprocal market access, AT&T and other US carriers can’t compete in global markets that are effectively closed, Pelson declared.
US retailers have sold at least 1m copies of Microsoft Corp Windows95 making it the company’s biggest launch by far, Microsoft declared.
Belgian publisher Tijd NV has signed a letter of intent with state phone company Belgacom NV for joint development of an electronic network to be part of the Internet World Wide Web: the Belgium On-Line network would link up private and corporate users inside the country and outside and offer a range of information on trade, advertising and entertainment as well as communications options for users; Tijd said the development of Belgium On-Line could result in the establishment of a joint company, possibly with third parties in Belgium.
Technology research company Competitive Technologies Inc was signed by IBM Corp to help review IBM patents for commercial potential outside the product and business areas that interest IBM: the pact, on undisclosed terms, runs several years.
The Samsung Electronics Co investment in AST Research Inc, Hyundai Electronics Co’s acquisition of NCR Microelectronics and LG Electronics Inc’s purchase of a controlling stake in Zenith Electronics Inc plus the big US chip plants planned by Hyundai and Samsung are likely to be the last such major foreign forays for some time: the South Korean government is beginning to worry about the outflow of cash and the level of foreign borrowing involved in such deals, and fearing debt problems, is imposing curbs.
But beginning next year, South Korea plans to scrap tariffs on imports of software, currently taxed at a rate of 8%, the Ministry of Finance & Economy announced; but blank media and media containing multimedia software will remain subject to the tariff, it said.
Trader Itochu Corp and Toshiba Corp are in final stages of talks to swap their current stakes in Time Warner Entertainment for stakes in parent company Time Warner Inc: each holds a 5.61% stake in Time Warner Entertainment, but under a restructuring scheme, Time Warner Entertainment will in future concentrate on the cable television business, and the movie and television programming businesses will move to the parent, Time Warner.
Problems with Windows95’s on-line features are showing up already, and the Wall Street Journal reports that users are finding that if they once try the built-in Internet access software, all their previous Internet access files are disabled – and if they laboriously rekey all the account data, Windows95 overwrites it again when the computer is rebooted – and CompuServe Inc complains that Microsoft Corp won’t give it the technical specifications that would enable it to fix the problem, an assertion hotly denied.
Sprint
Corp says it will pay customers 10% of their annual long distance bills in cash to keep them from switching long distance companies in an increasingly competitive environment: Sprint said the 10% is based on the total amount billed in a given month on all domestic and international usage including dial-1, Foncard, operator-assisted and directory assistance; the minimum cheques issued will be for $25.
