Although it has decided it must stay in the personal computer business so has not included it in the computer operations it is proposing to sell to Digital Equipment Corp (that deal still isn’t signed, sealed and delivered), Philips is really hurting from the relentless attrition in personal computer prices, and is having to lay off 189 production employees at the former Micom plant in Montreal – where it makes all its desktop machines: it will then have 350 unionised production employees and another 300 salaried staff at the plant, which has capacity to make between 500,000 and 700,000 machines a year but will only do about 250,000 this year because of the dreadful state of the market; it hopes to recall the laid-off employees in the second half of 1992.
