It’s quarterly report time for many US computer majors. Why US corporations law puts US companies through the quarterly hoop is an economic mystery. Politically, it would be like annual elections.
Anyway, if you look hard enough into the quarterly accounts there is always some good news, a bit like newspaper circulation figures.
Microsoft reported an increase in reserves of 24 percent over its fiscal 1993 result. And revenues were up 24 per cent to $US1.29 million in the fourth quarter of fiscal 1994. Net income was up 20 per cent to $1.15 billion.
The thing that spoiled it was the protracted litigation with Stac electronics over the disk compression technology. Microsoft was ordered to pay $US120 million and Stac to pay Microsoft $US1.34. But they settled before the verdicts were actually paid.
Stac announced during the week it had settled several other claims and was now free of litigation.
Microsoft announced that it had settled a case with the US Justice Department over allegation of anti-competitive practice and as a consequence Novell withdrew a separate complaint against Microsoft.
Intel announced a second-quarter revenue increase of 30 per cent over the same period last year to $US 2.77 billion. Intel produces the vast bulk of microprocessing chips in personal computers.
And Compaq announced record international sales of $US2.5 billion for its second quarter, a 53 per cent increase over the same period the previous year.
However, Lotus was down 5 per cent.
Apple’s third quarter sales were $2.15 billion against $1.86 billion in the same period last year and it earned $138 million, or $59.4 million before an extraordinary gain. This compared with a net profit of $10.6m for the same period last year.
IBM reported profits of $689m for the quarter, far ahead of expectations, causing its shares to rocket.
The computing industry clearly is no longer in recession.
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Electronic Takeovers 1: More government a private sector bodies are moving away from cheques to electronic transfer, according to a survey by Price Waterhouse Urwick. They are ridding themselves of as much manual checking as possible and reducing the number of invoices and payments.
Moves include: monthly invoice and payment systems rather than item-by-item ones; electronic payments and scanners and imaging software.
Cumbersome manual matching of invoices, payment authorisations and cheque signings were on the way out.
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Electronic Takeovers 2: Perth-based Travel Vision says the expensively produced glossy travel brochure will be a thing of the past, replaced by the CD. It says on CD can contain 500,000 words of high quality colour pictures and 500,000 words of text.
Travel Vision executive Peter Snow said the CD was “”an environmentally friendly alternative considering the thousands of tonnes of out-dated brochures which are discarded annually by travel agents.”
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Electronic Takeovers 3: Seamus Campbell (Ph 015 268456) has thousands of dollars worth of information about books on CD. He will search titles and fax results individually or through subscription service.
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Apple Mac will preview its operating system upgrade 7.5 at the PC94 exhibition in Melbourne from August 9 to 12. It promises to make life easier for people who have to work in both Mac and Windows, allowing Windows files to be opened and worked on in compatible Mac applications.
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Canberra PC Users Group now has an OS/2 special interest off-shoot. It meets on the third Thursday of the month at IBM House, 8 Brisbane.