Radius Inc is in so much trouble that it is having to let go of its Macintosh cloning business, and will sell an 80.1% stake in it to another Mac OS licensee, scanning specialist Umax Data Systems Ltd of Taipei, Taiwan. The attraction to Umax is that its initial licence was for Asia only, and by buying the Sunnyvale, California company’s business, it buys a licence for the US and Europe too. Umax will rename the business Umax Computer Corp, and Umax Computer, in Fremont, will own the system designs, key vendor and customer contracts, as well as the research and development staff. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed. Umax Computer also gets exclusive rights to use the Radius Systems SuperMac brand name and will develop and market further PCI bus PowerPC-based Mac clones, starting with two models set for next quarter. They are Stormsurge, a 150MHz PowerPC 604-based PCI system aimed at high-end graphics workstation market; and Riptide, a PowerPC 603-based PCI bus machine aimed at the consumer and educational markets. Umax founder Huang is also chairman of Taiwan-based Elitegroup Computer Systems Ltd, one of four companies from which Apple Computer Inc is reported to be taking bids for contract manufacturing of 300,000 motherboards per month, which the company wants to sell on to clone makers. Elitegroup, First International Computer Co, Acer Inc and GVC Corp all confirmed to Electrical Engineering Times that they were in touch with Apple on taking at least part of the deal.
