It seems that since Tandy Corp stepped up its return to Europe by acquiring the Victor Technologies subsidiaries from Stockholm, Sweden company Datatronics AB in 1989, its relationship with OEM supplier Kyocera Corp has been less than harmonious. Kyocera, which launched its own branded range of personal computers in October (CI No 1,548), still relies heavily on OEM contracts for personal computers, and of the 600,000 OEM products Kyocera has shipped since 1982, it is reckoned that Victor – which marketed the machines in Europe accounted for as much as 50%. The exact circumstances of the fall-out with Victor are unclear, but Kyocera recently told the press that it will no longer be supplying the company. It has been suggested that Kyocera’s attack on the European personal computer market was largely motivated by the dispute with Victor and the fact that the company’s OEM business is no longer what it was. Victor, meanwhile, has been lying low, getting its new M range of computers manufactured at subcontracting factories in Wales – AB Electronics Plc presumably – awaiting the establishment of Tandy plants on the continent. Tandy stepped back from its international operations in the mid-1980s when it spun the Tandy shops in Europe and other parts of the world into an independent company, InterTan Inc, but was brought back in a fairly small way when it acquired Grid Systems Corp.