=========================================================================== REPORT ON ESCOM'S MAY 30th FRANKFURT PRESS CONFERENCE By: Angela Schmidt uk8b@rz.uni-karlsruhe.de Translated by: Giorgio Gomelsky gio@phantom.com Thanks to Baffy and Fionn for proofreading/German-checking =========================================================================== [Faced with a $1,600 plane fare, I was unable to attend Escom's press conference. It was much cheaper to send Angela Schmidt instead, and she brought back the most important points of the presentation. -Jason] Escom has founded a division called Amiga Technologies GmbH. Escom considers the patents and rights they obtained from Commodore to be their keys in the multi-media market. The Amiga line will be continued under the name "Amiga" and distributed worldwide. Escom will use the "Commodore" label for Intel-based multi-media-PCs which will be distributed in Europe only. They did a market study in Germany and found that 93% of all PC users knew the name Commodore-literally, only the name IBM is better known here. As of August, there will be Pentium PCs with the name "Commodore", and Escom plans to sell between 50,000 and 60,000 before the end of the year. One month later, the Amiga 4000T should be produced in appreciable numbers. In the past, less than 1,000 were produced. They are planning to sell around 25,000 by the end of the year, 10,000 in the United States. The new 4000T will also have a new design. They are making big efforts so as to have a new design from the very beginning. It has been mentioned that the new A4000T will have a SCSI connection that was missing from the 4000s. This was considered to be a major disadvantage in the original 4000s. A month after that (October), it is planned to make the A1200 available again. They are estimating that between 120,000 and 150,000 will be sold by the end of the year. They will try not to miss Christmas sales by all means. With the CD32, several problems have shown up: It is not easy to get hold of all necessary components needed for the production of the CD32. There seem to be problems in supplying those parts. For this reason there wont be CD32's until next year. Until then, the CD32 will get a far more attractive design, to compete with the game consoles. Eventually, in the future, there will also be slightly altered CD32s for set-top boxes. It is possible that next year there will also be an A1300, based on a 68EC030, which would also have a CD-ROM drive as a standard feature. Also, the first of the Amiga Technologies-based set-top boxes may be built immediately. Escom has licensed Viscorp to build such a unit. In this area of licensing, they will be open to other possibilities. With regards to the future, they are considering building a RISC-chip based Amiga. PowerPC and the HP-PA RISC chip are being considered, but no decision has been made yet. At any rate, there shall be an Amiga operating system for this RISC-based system, because AmigaOS simply belongs to the Amiga. The porting of AmigaOS to non-Amiga platforms is also being talked about. This would bring the Amiga closer to the mainstream. With regards to the use of AAA, no decision has been made. Jeff Frank, Engineering Director of Amiga Technologies, has announced an expansion of the A4000T, one based on the 68060 turbo card which is will likely be very similar to the CyberStorm 060 card, since there seem to be licensing agreements with Phase5. An expansion of the A1200 to an 68EC030 may also be considered. The new Amigas will be bundled with a product from Scala (MM 300). Whether a good word processor and paint program would have been preferable is open to argument. Amiga Technologies plans a turnover of 100,000,000 DM in 1995, which mainly is to be achieved by Christmas business. At the moment, the monthly expenditure is in the region of 600,000 DM. But the intention is to get into the black by the end of the year, and by spring of '96, the $10 million cost of acquisition should also be covered. The central distribution will be in Holland. There will be different methods of distribution-for instance, through wholesalers, store chains, and mail order houses. The Amigas will additionally be distributed through special distributors. Commodore will offer sales- and marketing support to their resellers. Furthermore, there will be a program in Europe for the training of distributors. The customer support should also be considerably improved. It has been mentioned several times that ESCOM received an overwhelming amount of faxes and letters, most of which had to remain unanswered. Many have sent them their wishes for the future. There were also expressions of concern from the users about the Amiga being taken over by a PC manufacturer. Amiga Technologies would also like to be directly on the Internet very soon. For this purpose, there will be an Amiga connected to the net.