IBM Corp says it really is prepared to share, even lose, control of its Global Network, not just with Stet SpA but with other telecommunications companies in order to build a worldwide network that will offer customers multimedia applications and services: however, the company is particularly vague about details relating to the joint venture and potential other partners and said it is undecided whether its US network, already managed as a joint venture with Sears, Roebuck & Co, will be part of the package; IBM said it was too early to detail what will and will not form the joint venture and it would probably not have a detailed agreement until early next year; nevertheless it is remarkably confident about the prospect of losing ultimate control over a network that serves 25,000 customers in more than 100 countries; IBM reckons those joining the joint venture will share the same ideas that it is more likely for them to agree than disagree.
Hewlett-Packard Co was up to sixth place in the world personal computer market in the second quarter according to Dataquest Inc, which has the top five as Compaq Computer Corp, IBM Corp, Apple Computer Inc, NEC Corp and Packard Bell Electronics Inc: the figures are by number, and with 520,000 machines shipped in the quarter, Hewlett, now expanding the outlets for its new home computers now, shipped 520,000 boxes against 585,000 for Packard Bell, which suggests it will soon be fifth, not too far behind NEC; IBM, with 1,060,000 is only just ahead of Apple with 1,010,000; Compaq is out of sight with 1.45m.
SBC Communications Inc, the San Antonio, Texas company formerly called Southwestern Bell Corp and formerly of St Louis, Missouri, will pay $90m for a 15.5% stake in Mobile Telephone Networks Ltd, one of South Africa’s two national cellular companies, in which Cable & Wireless Plc is an investor, and has entered a joint venture with New Africa Investments Ltd, South Africa’s largest black-controlled publicly listed company; the joint venture, which will last for at least five years, will identify telecommunications opportunities in South Africa, Lesotho, Swaziland, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Namibia, Malawi, Zambia, Botswana and Angola.
Motorola Inc is to invest $30m to expand its Fort Worth cellular equipment plant, adding 700 jobs.
Is Ted Turner going to muscle in on the cosy party between those two fading giants Westinghouse Electric Corp and CBS Inc? According to the New York Times, John Malone, chief executive of Tele-Communications Inc , is backing Ted Turner and his Turner Broadcasting System Inc – at which they all laughed when he started the now legendary Cable News Network just over a decade ago – in his dream of gaining control of a broadcast television network, saying at the Englewood, Colorado company’s annual meeting that his company would do everything we can to help Turner to get a network; Tele-Communications is a 20% shareholder in Turner Broadcasting.
We wondered what was behind the resignation of Digital Equipment Corp personal computer chief Bernhard Auer, but the Boston Globe is in no doubt that he was fired: company sources told the paper he was forced to resign for failing to meet financial targets – DEC had planned to join the world’s top five personal computer companies this year, but it failed even to get into the Top 10 according to the first quarter figures put together by International Data Corp; DEC in public is insisting that Auer’s departure had nothing to do with the personal computer unit’s performance, saying that he simply left to pursue other interests.
Well that sounds really sensible: the gossips are again saying that AT&T Corp is thinking of buying back Unix (and a whole lot more of course) by acquiring Novell Inc – it makes perfect sense now that AT&T Global Information Solutions has scaled back its commitment to Unix and is betting the shop on NetWare’s arch-rival, Windows NT.
There are of course as many mergers and acquisitions that are tragedies because they didn’t happen as a
re travesties because they did: as we said at the time, Burroughs Corp’s acquisition of Sperry Corp was lunacy, and Sperry would have been a super fit for NCR Corp, bringing it the top end it didn’t have, and at the time pursuing similar strategies lower down; predator at the time was of course Burroughs, stuffed with low-end products that could easily have been sold by a copier sales force, so that a combination with Xerox Corp might well have revitalised both companies.
China and Russia are to lay an international fibre optic telecommunications cable to connect Harbin, capital of China’s northeast Heilongjiang Province with Khabarovsk in the Russian Far East: construction will start in September and it will be opened for service by the end of 1996, hears the listening post of the BBC Monitoring Service.
University of California’s Riverside and Irvine campuses are to use IBM Corp’s Mach-derived microkernel for research into distributed shared memory and real-time technology.
Irish communications minister Michael Lowry says the government has reached agreement on the sell-off of up to 35% of state-owned phone company Telecom Eireann: he says that permission to postpone full deregulation of the telecommunications sector until 2000, two years after most of the rest of the European Community and putting it in the same basket as near third world countries like Greece, will be sought; the government also clarified its position on its proposed strategic alliance with a major telecommunications operator and said the partner should be willing to participate actively in changes within the company, inject funds to reduce debt and show a long-term commitment to the Irish market.
Austin, Texas-based 1st Tech Corp, diversified provider of custom services for the electronics industry, formed a marketing and procurement alliance with Altos India Ltd, the high-volume manufacturing subsidiary of Pertech Computers Ltd, which claims to be India’s largest personal computer company: the two will jointly pursue marketing opportunities that require high-quality design, prototyping and manufacturing capabilities, and 1st Tech will provide US procurement services for Altos’s manufacturing in New Delhi.
Tandy Corp reports that July sales from all stores rose 25% to $385.1m compared with the same month last year, and at stores that were open a year ago, sales advanced by 6%.
With IBM Corp proclaiming itself network-centric, and Hewlett-Packard Co going on about how the network is the system, Sun Microsystems Inc is leaving the imitators behind, and was last week suggesting that no longer is the network simply the computer, but that the network is the business.
ECI Telecom Ltd says that it and Sprint Corp have reached a tentative agreement on a five-year distribution and purchase contract with a potential value of $30m: it initially covers ECI’s DTX-240 digital circuit multiplication program, which expands the amount of facsimile and speech traffic over digital satellite and fibre optic networks, the Israeli company said.
