Toshiba Corp plans a drive to boost its share of Japan’s overall personal computer market, and said its goal is to become the number one DOS/V personal computer supplier the country: it has to date had more success in the portable market, but through an OEM deal with Intel Corp, has now begun to sell Intel desktops in Japan; it says it is third in the DOS/V market after IBM Japan Corp and Fujitsu Ltd at present; although Toshiba now has desktops, which it will not sell outside Japan, it believes the future is in laptops, and expects some half of the 8m personal computers in Japan will be notebooks by 1998.
In a reverse takeover, the San Jose maker of wireless infra-red local network products for personal computers Photonics Corp plans to acquire disk controller and input-output products maker DTC Data Management Corp in a stock swap after which DTC will represent 77.5% of the enlarged equity; DTC’s current management, officers and directors will run the enlarged Photonics Corp, with Photonics’s president Gary Hughes, and director Robert Wilson remaining on the new board.
MCI Communications Corp and First Union Corp will begin an 18-month trial of a service to provide banking over the Internet to First Union’s customers: subscribers will be able to access a variety of First Union banking applications, information and the bank’s virtual shopping mall and the companies say transactions will be totally secure; the software, valued at more than $75, will be given to customers free of charge; MCI will bill customer credit cards a $9.95 monthly subscription fee, to include the first five hours of Internet access and users will pay $2.50 per hour thereafter; Netscape Communications Corp’s Netscape Navigator has been customised for First Union customers by MCI for the trials.
Indonesia’s PT Telkom has signed a memorandum of understanding with AT&T Corp in Jakarta for the expansion and extension of fibre optic routes in Java, AT&T said: the project is expected to be completed in 1996; the companies did not give financial details of the project.
L M Ericsson AB has won contracts from Philippine telecommunications operator Smart Communications Inc worth a combined $249m: Ericsson is to deliver equipment for Smart to construct a fixed network and expand its existing cellular network, with its AXE digital switches as the basis for both the ground and cellular networks; one contract is for 280,000 fixed telephone lines, and a second for expanding Smart’s cellular network to 300,000 users.
Accountants BDO Stoy Hayward in London’s Baker Street were left without a bean to count this week when thieves ripped the memory modules and the processors – the things are about worth their weight in gold – out of 150 personal computers, but at least the firm practises what it preac hes, and told the Evening Standard that it was all backed up, and disaster recovery procedures had it up and running within four hours of discovery.
Nippon Telegraph & Telephone Corp says it is considering streamlining some of its businesses, such as software development and exchange system maintenance as part of a rationalisation plan: its software-related divisions’ business is duplicated in some parts, and could be merged into one within Nippon, or spun off from the company; Nippon said that these decisions will be made by the end of next March.
Compaq Computer Corp edged out AST Research Inc as the largest personal-computer vendor in China during the second quarter, according to figures released by Dataquest Inc: Compaq ended AST’s long dominance of the China market with a 21.3% share of the overall market, compared with AST’s 21% share, it says; in the first quarter, AST held a lead over Compaq by a similarly thin margin and IBM Corp came in a distant third with 6.5% of 221,000 machines sold in China in the second quarter; Compaq also held its overall lead in the Asia-Pacific region, which includes most major Asian countries but excludes Japan, with 10.1% of the market in the second quarter, compar
ed with 7.2% for Acer Inc of Taiwan and 6.9% for Samsung Electronics Co, which dominates the South Korean market; all told, vendors shipped 1.27m personal computers in the region in the second quarter, Dataquest reports.
L M Ericsson Telefon AB said a major restructuring of its Public Telecommunications division announced last week will have a considerable effect on its results which it would feel after the restructuring is carried out, Reuters reports: the company declined to give any details, but said it plans to reduce staff in the division to 24,000 from 30,000, and many staff would be transferred to other divisions with some operations being sold on to third-party suppliers.
Canon Inc is launching a device that adds an automatic filing function to its digital copiers: the Medio Digital Cabinet stores documents scanned into a copier on 3.5 magneto-optical disks, each of which can store contents of 3,600 or more A4 sheets; it can operate as a stand-alone unit or with a computer, Canon said; to retrieve files users can use the copier to print them out, or they can call them up on the computer’s screen.
You make a grown man cry: with one of the most-frequently reported problems encountered by installers of Windows95 being that the computer suddenly hangs during the process, the Rolling Stones are to be asked to go back into the studio and record a new version of the song called Start Me Up Again.
