The big sell-off in US technology shares on Wednesday last week seems to have been triggered by Microsoft Corp chief financial officer Mike Brown telling analysts on Monday that he was mystified by the current price of Microsoft’s shares, and called it pretty incredible in view of some of the uncertainties over the next few quarters, and issued a particularly long list of factors that should temper investors’ enthusiasm for Windows95 and related application programs: he predicted that sales of the new operating system will begin to wind down during the fourth quarter of fiscal 1996 to June 30, and revealed that Microsoft intends to defer recognition of about 40% of the revenue from sales of Windows95 packages over the next 18 months to smooth out a surge in revenue from the new product, and create a reserve in case Microsoft has to spend more for support or to upgrade products; it also has some concerns about potential price competition, higher tax rate and fast-rising research and marketing expenditure.
The US Federal Communications Commission will not even start its review of the planned Phoenix joint venture between France Telecom, Deutsche Telekom AG and Sprint Corp until September, Commission chairman Reed Hundt said in Paris yesterday, adding that approval was tied to evidence that the European countries were opening up their markets – he wanted clear and concrete evidence of French and German commitment to telecommunications liberalisation and privatisation before September, he warned.
Samsung Electro-Mechanics Co Ltd is forming a 50-50 joint venture with Toray Industries Inc to make films for semiconductor production: the paid-up share capital of Samsung’s wholly-owned Samsung Toray Electro Mechanics Co will be doubled via a cash infusion by Toray, and the company plans to begin construction of a factory in the province of Ch ungchong, south of Seoul, in September with annual production capacity of some 6m sheets of film, which is used in the chips needed for liquid crystal display panels; all the company’s output will be supplied to Samsung Toray Electronics Co, a 51%-49% joint venture between Samsung Electronics Co and the Japanese firm.
Cable & Wireless Plc’s partner Veba AG denied a report that it was in talks with Silvio Berlusconi’s Mediaset television company over the possibility of taking a stake in the Italian billionaire’s television empire: There are no plans and no discussions on any Italian projects, Veba told Reuters, responding to a report in Il Sole 24 Ore.
It wasn’t a very big place in terms of population even before Saddam Hussein tried to annexe it and succeeded in culling a significant number – and many foreigners from the region were not welcomed back after the Gulf War – so it is a bit disconcerting that Kuwaiti authorities disconnected 4,288 telephone subscribers for making obscene or nuisance calls in the first six months of 1995 and referred 1,698 of them to police for investigation, newspapers in the state reported on Sunday: about 3,000 telephone lines were monitored in the period to enable abusive callers to those numbers to be traced, the Kuwait Times and Arab Times quoted Ministry of Communications official Adel al-Ibrahim as saying – he said the ministry was extremely concerned about people abusing the system.
Acer Group reported a 72.8% year-on-year increase in combined sales revenues to a record $2,360m for the first six months of the year: in Acer’s main personal computer business, sales were 83% higher between January and June than in the same period last year, while peripheral product sales rose 59%.
Carl Goran Larson, new chief executive of Unisource NV, the target is a slot among the top three in the European telecoms market after liberalisation in 1998, he told Reuters in an interview: he saw current losses and the existing shackles imposed on the company by various telecommunications administrations melting away as the market explodes towards the next millenium; we have parts of our business that are profi
table but we need to put back our earnings into development and infrastructure, he said – private networks for multinational companies in Europe generate profits but the ultimate goal is to be one of the big three players in Europe, with a foot planted firmly in the main money-spinning segment of basic speech telephony – our biggest goal is to become the customer’s first choice in the whole industry; our biggest obstacle is politics; the market is not quite free yet the chief executive said.
The Herzlyia-based Cellcom consortium, which operates Israel’s second cellular phone network, says it is seeking compensation from Motorola Inc for losses it has suffered: Cellcom, as reported, stopped signing up new subscribers in April because of a problem with the software in Motorola handsets supplied to Cellcom customers that caused blockages on the network; it says ut suffered heavy losses both in financial terms and to its image.
Bell Canada International Inc is to invest $4.8m in the Astel Tokyo consortium of more that 100 Japanese and international companies that holds a licence for a Personal Handyphone System in greater Tokyo.
Prize for opening of the week goes to Laurence Zuckerman of the New York Times: ‘Every time I say I am an OS/2 user, I get immediately marginalised, an elderly woman confided to a young man sitting next to her at last week’s OS/2 World convention in Boston – ‘It’s amazing what saying you are an OS/2 user brings out in people.’
