Apple Computer Inc says it is still on target for mid-1994 launch of its first RISC-based Macintosh after IBM Corp announced that it was now shipping the first PowerPC chips to Apple. IBM made the announcement at the Semiconductor Industry Association meeting in San Jose, where it said that its Technology Products unit would have to start shuttering plants if it didn’t succeed in its new initiative of selling chips to other vendors and offering them on the merchant market. Revenues from third party sales will be below $100m, but in the next couple of years will rise to several hundred million dollars. The Technology Products chip business has been turned into a profit centre from its previous status as a cost centre. IBM plans to focus on offering specialised multichip modules rather than basic commodity chips, although it has started to offer memory chips in Japan.
