Absurdly, a flurry around the release date for Windows95 destabilised US share markets late on Wednesday until Microsoft Corp stepped up to say firmly that it was all systems go for August 24 and that manufacturers would get copies in time to have product out that day.
Meantime we hear that the 32-bit Release 4 of the Visual Basic language will be launched by Microsoft Corp on September 12.
Hutchison Whampoa Ltd’s Orange UK mobile telephone operation has a PC Card that will enable subscribers to connect their phone to a portable computer to send and receive facsimile and data files: the Orange service will cost ú500 for the PC Card and software, but there are no other subscription fees; the tariffs are the same as the ones it charges for speech traffic.
Still the implosion of Japan’s manufacturing base continues, and we are bemused that it is not generating more howls of anguish: consumer electronics manufacturer Akai Electric Co has made a general offer for Hong Kong electronics manufacturer Kong Wah Holdings Ltd so it can transfer all its audio-visual production into the company’s cheap labour factories, Akai, 55% owned by Semi-Tech (Global) Co Ltd, plans to invest $231m to acquire up to 81% of Kong Wah; Akai’s domestic manufacturing plant is in Tokyo, where it employs about 784 staff.
Technology Resources Industries Bhd is looking for an international telecommunications partner in its bid to become a major regional player, Reuters reports from Malaysia: it has appointed Hong Kong-based Libra Capital Markets and Morgan Stanley & Co as advisors to identify a renowned international telecommunications company; seven foreign companies have been shortlisted and the details are to be finalised in six to eight weeks.
Storage Technology Corp formally opened its new plant in Toulouse, France yesterday: the manufacturing, research and development site will start production of its TimberLine 9490 cartridge tape subsystem in March, and the company also will use the facility to work on electronic and software projects for storage and retrieval systems.
Sunnyvale, California-based Parcplace Systems Inc’s shares tumbled $2.625 to $8.125 after it warned it would lose $0.11 to $0.18 a share for its first quarter to June 30.
So much for the Financial Times item yesterday morning seemingly giving a blow-by-blow account of how both AT&T Corp and British Telecommunications Plc had taken close looks at the company and both walked away: rumours that AT&T had put in an offer for Cable & Wireless Plc’s Mercury Communications Ltd hummed round the market in late trade, helping the shares to rise 10 pence to 428 pence at the close.
Ambitious Tulip Computers NV is poised to enter the Chinese market and will open offices in Peking and Shanghai: it plans to set up assembly facilities in Asia and to start full production as soon as distribution volume it needs is reached.
Siemens AG is standing by its April profit forecast despite currency turbulence that led Daimler-Benz AG to forecast a loss: Siemens said in April that because of the strong mark it was no longer certain it could reach its projection of 20% profit growth in the year to September 30, but aside from that small question mark, the company has no bigger revisions in mind.
Indian computer training and software export company NIIT Ltd has formed an alliance with US software engineering company Aligra Systems Inc to offer training programmes locally: the two partners will bring to India object-oriented analysis and design techniques to help local software companies to develop user-friendly and effective applications faster and cheaper.
Tower Semiconductors Ltd, the Migdal Haemak company formed out of the National Semiconductor Corp operations the San Jose company no longer wanted, told Reuters it will use a major portion of the $87m it raised in its share offering this week to expand production: the semiconductor foundry currently produces 12,500 silicon wafer starts per month a
nd this number will rise to 16,000 by the end of the year, and to 22,000 wafer starts a month by the end of next year, rising to 27,000 in 1997, the company said.
The GEC-Marconi Ltd arm of General Electric Co Plc plans to cut 1,000 jobs at its radar and defence unit, a seventh of the total workforce, in response to market conditions which are becoming increasingly competitive both internationally and domestically, it said; the job cuts will be spread around GEC’s many British factories and bases.
What’s wrong with Microsoft Corp bundling the Microsoft Network access software with Windows95? If there is anything wrong about it it is human laziness and inertia: with the software already installed, the barriers to an individual signing up for an on-line service are reduced, and they are more likely to sign up for the one for which they already have the software than take the trouble to get the software and sign up for another one: according to the New York Times, Pipeline Communications Inc of Atlanta has chapter and verse on behavioural patterns because it offers customer registration services for hardware and software manufacturers, and finds that where a manufacturer offers a free trial subscription for America Online or Prodigy or CompuServe with its machines as a come-on to persuade customers to register, half of all buyers decide to register their names as users of the machine, and 60% of those that register also sign up for the on-line trial – equivalent to 30% of all buyers; why are the existing on-line services worried about the Microsoft Network? Dataquest Inc reckons that Windows95 will sell 30m copies in the first four months of marketing, 30% of that is 9m triallists – and America Online, 2.9m, CompuServe, 2m and Prodigy, 1.7m, only have 6.6m between them; triallists may decide not to subscribe in droves, but even so, the Microsoft Network looks likely to be number one as soon as Christmas.
Spanish electronic equipment manufacturer Amper SA sees profits doubling in 1995, a year after it returned to profit; it also said yesterday it is is still negotiating with Siemens AG about the German taking stakes in some units.
It’s not clear whether all these companies are using the same technology – Sony Corp’s sounds very unusual, combining gas plasma with liquid crystals, but NEC Corp has now joined the ranks of Japanese consumer electronics firms with plans to start selling flat-screen television sets using some kind of plasma display: the company plans to invest $119m in the year starting April 1997 to build a new plant to produce the displays at a rate of 10,000 plasma panels a month.
NEC Corp’s technology is said to be almost identical to that used by Fujitsu Ltd for its large screen flat panels, but Sony Corp has gone to Tektronix Inc for the base technology for its hybrid plasma and liquid crystal Plasmatron displays: the approach seeks to combine the best features of liquid crystal and plasma, so that where active matrix liquid crystal displays use a separate transistor to control each picture element, and one dud transistor shows up like a missing front tooth so you can’t make the things much bigger than 10 and get tolerable yields, and plasma displays use ionised gases that are excited by a voltage to create light for the image, Sony reckons the technology is not sharp enough, so instead of making the plasma glow, it appears to be putting a cell of plasma behind each liquid crystal and uses the ionised gas to switch the crystals.
Siemens AG’s network systems division says it has mobilised one of the transatlantic fibre optic cables to implement the first high-speed commercial link: the system connects high-speed networks operated by British Telecommunications Plc, Telecom Eireann and MCI Communications Corp, and customers can use the system to access local area networks on the other side of the ocean as if they were in the same building; Deutsche Telekom AG is also considering participating in the project, but it doesn’t say whether we are talking
Frame Relay or Asynchronous Transfer Mode here.
The agreement between Visa International and MasterCard International Inc (CI No 2,691) to join forces to secure credit-card payments over the Internet, means the two will have to harmonise the work done by the alliance between Visa and Microsoft Corp to develop Secure Transaction Technology, the one between MasterCard and Netscape Communications Corp , which uses a Secure Socket Layer that scrambles sensitive data such as credit-card numbers.
Pacific Telesis Group Inc’s Pacific Bell is reorganising its operations around three principal market-facing customer segments and will eliminate about 500 positions – only a drop in the ocean of jobs under threat: it is in process of identifying some 10,000 surplus positions.
