The difficult things, we screw up immediately, the simple ones take a little longer: after Magstar, Ramac-2, second generation CMOS mainframes, IBM Corp now warns that it has found that some of its 9527 colour monitors many have been improperly assembled, which could expose users to electrical shock if the things are not properly earthed: the affected monitors are models 9527-001, 9527-011, 9527-T01, 9527-T21, 9527-005, and 9527-015, sold after September 1993; they can be indentified on the front panel as 17P, 17PT, or 17XG, IBM said.
The European Commission may win British Telecommunications Plc what it can’t get from the UK Department of Trade & Industry: it is drafting legislation that could pave the way for telephone companies to compete with cable television operators in offering broadcast services, and it may be appended to the draft directive requiring Community governments to allow cable operators to carry some telecommunications services by January 1 next year; even if the UK is able to block it for an interim phase on competition grounds, that concession would expire in 2000, meaning that the phone company would definitely be free to offer services from then.
Cable & Wireless Plc said on Friday it has decided to withdraw its proposal of March 1994 to form a strategic alliance with state-owned Telecom Eireann, saying it has decided it wants to focus on developing competing businesses in the important telecommunications markets of Western Europe, together with continuing investment in the UK; it also remains committed to services for the Irish market through its headquarters in Dublin.
US West Inc wasted little time on Friday before filing a suit to block the proposed acquisition by Time Warner Inc of Turner Broadcasting System Inc (see story on today’s front page): US West, which owns 25% of Time Warner’s entertainment division, charged in its suit that acquisition of Turner would create conflicts of interest.
The information and financial services division of Daimler-Benz AG has decided not to exercise its option to acquire a majority in Cap Gemini Sogeti SA, La Tribune Desfosses reported: it gave no source but said Daimler-Benz InterServices, which has until the end of 1995 to exercise its option to increase its 34% stake to a majority stake, should confirm next month.
You make a grown man cry: Microsoft Corp shares fell at the end of last week as investors grew concerned that sales of Windows95 have slowed, possibly causing a build-up of inventory at retailers: they were down $2.50 to $90.625 on word that Microsoft initially shipped 8m to 10m units to retailers but that so far only 2m to 3m units have been sold; for the seven days ended September 20, Microsoft sold about $33m of Windows95, according to PC Data, Reston, Virginia; they sold $100m in the first week; in the week to September 6, sales fell to $53m, and $46m the following week.
Cuts AT&T Corp is making at the former NCR before spinning it off include 1,000 of the 4,300 jobs at the company’s Dayton headquarters and all 900 jobs at the personal computer manufacturing plant in Liberty, South Carolina; also going are the jobs of 1,300 contract employees; in Europe, Germany bears the brunt of the cuts because that is where the personal computers were made – there it is closing the Augsburg plant, eliminating 700 jobs; it will still employ 700 in Augsburg after the lay-offs; the German plant had been operating profitably so it is possible another personal computer company will buy it; the UK is shedding 6% – 130 go in sales and marketing, and 46 at the worldwide automatic teller machine plant in Dundee, Scotland.
So why is AT&T Corp recreating the old NCR Corp by spinning it off to shareholders as a very shaky stand-alone company instead of simply selling it? All the signs are that it tried, but no-one would to pay it a price that would not look acutely embarrassing when set against the $7,500m it paid for NCR.
Finis Conner, founder of Conner Peripherals Inc is now too much o
f a rival of one-time partner Alan Shugart, boss of Seagate Technology Inc to stick around for long after the takeover, and according to the New York Times, while the two are in agreement over the merits of the merger, there are no plans for Conner to remain with the combined company past a transition period.
Reuters Holdings Plc has opened a main technical centre in Singapore, one of the three it has globally: Reuters decided to move its main Asian technical operations to Singapore from Tokyo to protect itself against earthquake risks and because of rising costs in Japan.
Bulgarian software company Selenics OOD has launched a locally produced digital video-telephone five times cheaper than foreign ones: The video-telephone was developed in Bulgaria, its camera and computer board were also made here; the whole device costs $1,000, company president Atanas Groshev declared; users will need a 66MHz 80486DX2 machine with 4Mb memory, and also a small digital PABX, unless they wait for ISDN service to be launched; unlike Alcatel NV videophones on sale in Bulgaria, the Selenics camera is detachable and therefore it can be directed at any object.
Indonesian communications operator PT Satelit Palapa Indonesia will launch its first two satellites in January and April next year with Palapa C-1 launched by the Martin Marietta Commercial Launch Services unit of Lockheed Martin Corp in Florida and a second, C-2 will be launched by European rocket consortium Arianespace SA in April: the C-1, the first of a new generation of Indonesian satellites built by General Motors Corp’s Hughes Aircraft Co with longer active lives and more transponders, was due to be launched by Arianespace last November but Satelit Palapa switched to Lockheed after apparent scheduling problems and the failure of two other Arianespace launches; C-1 will carry television channels such as Cable News Network, Home Box Office, Australia’s Channel 9, Malaysia’s TV3 and Canal France International with the second for back-up.
Hong Kong’s overcrowded cellular telephone sector will remain stuck in a bottleneck until China and the UK agree on issuing new licences, industry analysts say: according to Reuter, the result is would-be users are being forced to queue for months to get a phone and existing cellular companies are benefitting from the lack of competition and reaping windfall profits from it.
3Com Corp, San Jose is now saying it expects to complete its acquisition of Chipcom Corp next month.
When Novell Inc chief Bob Frankenberg addressed the company’s 400 Unix people in Florham Park, New Jersey last Tuesday – the ones it inherited from AT&T Corp – we’re told each and every one of them had a copy of the newsflash on the sale of UnixWare to Santa Cruz Operation Inc and deal with Hewlett-Packard Co that our sister paper Unigram.X distributed at Unix Expo earlier in the day: when Frankenberg got up to speak, one employee asked why they should carry on listening when it was all there before them in the flash; Frankenberg told them some of what had been written was wrong and continued with his speech; when he finished, the same employee rose and asked ‘so where was it wrong?’
