Monitor supplier Taxan Europe Ltd, a subsidiary of Japanese company Kaga Co Ltd, hopes to become a major player in the European Apple Computer Inc Macintosh market as a result of its new OEM agreement with colour graphics accelerator board maker, Radius UK Ltd. Bracknell, Berkshire-based Taxan has, to date, sold about 90% of its products into the IBM Corp and IBM-compatible world, incorporating Ottawa, Ontario-based ATi Technologies Inc’s graphics accelerators as necessary. While this is still the biggest market worldwide, Taxan decided about two years ago that the Macintosh arena was too large to be ignored any more, and that any incidental penetration already achieved was no longer enough. Sales and marketing director Hugh Chappell reckons that out of 60,000 20 monitors sold into the UK last year, approximately 10,000 – with an equivalent value of UKP25m – were sold to Macintosh customers. So the group started looking around for a partner, and found two major players: Radius, which claims to have 65% of the European third party Macintosh market; and video capture specialist Supermac Technology Inc, which is based in Sunnyvale, California, and holds the number two position in the European Mac market.
Best performance
According to Chappell, Taxan chose Old Woking, Surrey-based Radius for several reasons. First, its boards provide the best performance in terms of resolution, colours and acceleration and although they are not the cheapest available, they are cost-effective. Second, Radius’s parent company in the US has a good relationship with Apple, which enables it to keep pace with change, and stay ahead in the market. The relationship means that, henceforth, Taxan will integrate Radius’s PrecisionColour range of accelerator cards with its full range of monitors and sell them as a complete package. Its aim for the next year is to become a major player in the Macintosh market, which means in Chappell’s opinion, a share of at least 10%. The group generates about half of its revenues from selling its monitors OEM to computer manufacturers and assemblers, such as Compagnie des Machines Bull SA and Seiko Epson Co. The rest of its business comes from distributors, IBM Corp resellers, direct dealers and retail chains, such as PC World. Conversely, Radius believes that the deal will help broaden the markets it addresses within the Macintosh world. In the past, like Apple, it has focussed on the desk-top publishing and graphic design markets. But now, like Apple again, it is keen to expand into new areas such as general business, multimedia and home use, and it reckons that the new contract will help it do just that. While there will be a certain amount of overlap between the two – Radius takes tubes from such suppliers as Sony Corp, Hitachi Ltd and Toshiba Corp and builds monitors around them – both companies reckon that its a case of if you can’t beat them, join them.
