AST Research Inc, Irvine, California looks to have overcome its difficulties and avoided the threat of being swept away by the fierce competitive pressures in the personal computer market: it expects to report a profit of $7m for its fiscal second quarter to December 29 versus a loss of $8.9m, on sales of about $130m, up from $110m; key selling point is that it designs its machines so that they can be upgraded by swapping the CPU board.
