Quantum Corp expects the Internet, as well as Microsoft Corp’s forthcoming Windows95 to have a huge financial impact on the disk drive industry in general and Quantum’s business, chairman and chief executive Bill Miller told the Hambrecht & Quist conference: The Internet has enormous implications for storage; the opportunities for us are immense, Miller said, citing estimates that by the year 2000, 1,000m people will use the Internet, downloading vast quantities of data requiring storage; as for Windows95, this required far more storage than current Windows software, he said.
h & q
Broderbund Software Inc expects turnover to grow by at least 25% in the current fiscal year despite a tapering off of sales of its computer game Myst: its chief financial officer, Mike Shannahan, told the Hambrecht & Quist conference, As we go into the third and fourth quarters this year obviously the hurdles are higher (than in the first half); we will not be seeing the 69% growth we saw in the first half…it will be closer to 25% to 30%: Shannahan said that year-to-year comparisons would not be very meaningful, because last year Myst experienced blockbuster sales, accounting for about 27% of overall sales and now they were starting to taper off; no new titles would be available in the near term to fill the gap, but last week Broderbund gave a preview of its first new games since Myst – In the First Degree, an interactive courtroom drama, likely to be available in late summer, and Ascendancy, a three-dimensional game in which the player can make peace or war with several celestial species, which is expected to ship in the autumn.
h & q
Intel Corp expects to introduce its 130MHz Pentium chip in the next 60 days: it will also introduce its 150MHz chip by the end of the year, Intel’s Albert Yu told delegates over dinner on Tuesday; Yu alluded to products other than the next-generation P6, but declined to elaborate; the P6 is scheduled to be released by the end of the year; Intel expects more than 20% growth in the world-wide personal computer market but it doesn’t expect its motherboard manufacturing business to become a major one; Yu said that creating a motherboard for the Pentium chip, which Intel had to do because of special requirements for the chip, had enabled the company to move products to market quicker.
h & q
Novell Inc said feedback from the trial with AT&T Corp of its global data network is positive and commercial availability remains on target for October or November: thenetwork will enable companies to link computer and data systems.
h & q
SAP AG plans to add employees and resources to SAP America to build on its 1994 success, when sales grew 157% to represent 31% of the company’s total revenues, the unit’s president, Klaus Besier said, adding, We will go into new industry segments; we added utilities in 1994 and we’ve started higher education: Besier said SAP also plans to release version 3.0 of R/3 this year and will seek more partners.
h & q
Intuit Inc chairman Scott Cook attended Hambrecht & Quist’s conference to tell those gathered he’s confident Microsoft Corp’s proposed $2,000m takeover will go ahead, despite the US Justice Department filing its anti-trust lawsuit to block the deal: Justice says the deal would blunt competition and enable Microsoft to dominate emerging markets; both have agreed to a speedy trial, which has been set to start next month, but such a suit could last months, even years; We’ll stick it out as long as it takes, Cook said, and as for the trial taking years, Who cares? The stuff we’re doing will take us decades; as for Intuit considering bids from other companies, Cook said, If we had been… I couldn’t comment on that… the Securities & Exchange Commission would slap my hand, adding that Intuit is always talking to potential partners but that the Microsoft-Intuit deal will clear; Intuit’s Quicken personal finance product is used by about 7m people, commanding about 70% of the person
al finance software business; Microsoft’s Money holds about 20%; Justice rebuffed Microsoft’s proposed sale of Money to Novell Inc, saying Novell would never have the resources to compete against the merged rival; Cook added that Intuit plans to be in the channel that connects financial institutions to customers, and vice versa, and to become more involved in customers’ financial planning.
h & q
Adding to chief financial officer Joseph Graziano’s comments on revenue from licensing the Macintosh operating system (CI No 2,656), Apple Computer Inc says growth in unit shipments of PowerPC products is accelerating: Apple told the technology conference that it had shipped more than 400,000 units in its second quarter, ahead of internal expectations, to make up more than 40% of shipments for the quarter and bringing to 1.4m the total shipments of PowerPC products since their introduction; Graziano said demand was faster than supply and there was an orders backlog but Apple was increasing supply; he added that competition from Windows95 may be overstated’and Mac customers appeared unlikely to change their habits; going foward, gross margins would probably come down, but any slip from the second-quarter level of 26.2% was minor; one of Apple’s goals for the coming year will be to gain market share.
