People have been saying that IBM had inked in October 17 for launch of the next generation of RT Unix workstations for weeks now – but anyone that puts a firm date on an IBM announcement as far ahead as that is either nuts or is unversed in the ways of the company. Word now is that IBM has run into more problems with the new version of AIX for the machine – which is the one to be adopted by the Open Software Foundation – and that the new models may not now be announced until early next year. IBM has also gone on record as saying that users are demanding 20 MIPS performance at no more than $20,000, and that it will do its best to achieve that, but the company’s problem is that if the thing is delayed much more, users’ price-performance expectations will have risen again. As for the existing RT, International Data Corp reckons IBM has sold only 13,000 worldwide and that only 3,900 were for use as workstations, where Sun Microsystems sold 69,000 workstations and DEC 41,600 in 1988 alone.
