From gbo@worldnet.net Thu Jun 1 13:56:49 1995 Return-Path: gbo@worldnet.net Received: from world-net.sct.fr (world-net.sct.fr [194.2.128.2]) by outland.cyberwar.com (8.6.10/8.6.9) with ESMTP id NAA30042 for ; Thu, 1 Jun 1995 13:42:43 -0400 Received: from worldnet (client13.sct.fr [194.2.128.43]) by world-net.sct.fr (8.6.12/8.6.10) with SMTP id TAA11012 for ; Thu, 1 Jun 1995 19:44:12 +0200 Received: by worldnet.net (Amiga SMTPpost 1.04 December 9, 1994) id AA01; Thu, 1 Jun 95 19:41:12 Received: by worldnet.net (Amiga SMTPpost 1.04 December 9, 1994) id AA01; Thu, 1 Jun 95 19:32:10 From: gbo@worldnet.net (Gilles Bourdin) Message-ID: <2fce68a7@worldnet.net> Subject: Amiga Press release Date: 01 Jun 95 19:25:59 CET Organization: Private Leon site France X-Mailer: AmiGate 1.3a (24.3.95) Reply-To: gbo@worldnet.net To: zool@outland.cyberwar.com Status: RO X-Status: * This message forwarded from area 'Courrier Worldnet' (NET_2_999_99_9) * Original message dated 01 Jun 95, from Gilles Bourdin Hi, here are the speeches of Manfred Schmitt and Petro Tyschtschenko at the Amiga press conference in Frankfurt. You can post this wherever you like. Frankfurt/Main, May 30, 1995 Speech of Manfred Schmitt Escom AG Chairman of the Executive Board Ladies and gentlemen, Since we won the auction for the intellectual property of Commodore and Amiga, the ESCOM AG is flooded with congratulation messages. Amiga clubs and Amiga users write to ask us to revive and continue to develop and improve the Amiga. Many of them actually sent us their wishes for future hardware architectures and operating systems improvements. However, it is still unclear for many users how a PC manufacturer and retailer will use the Amiga technology. Here is our answer: ESCOM now turns from a PC manufacturer and retailer into a multimedia company. The big multimedia applications will come very soon as Pay-TV, Video on demand, homebanking, home-shopping and online services. In this growing market, we want to become a leading provider of hardware, software and solutions. Our goal is to give the user a cost-efficient way to access all these new services the multimedia world will allow. The Amiga technology brings us all we need here in an elegant way. We see in the Amiga the key to Multimedia technologies for the future. As an intelligent terminal, you all know the PC. Many people use the PC in conjunction with a modem to access online services and the worldwide Internet. Escom is providing that market with a wide palette of advantageoulsy priced Multimedia PCs in a range between 2000 and 3000 DM. But there are other user profiles, who want to use the multimedia technology without having to spend several thousands of DM. For these users, the Amiga represents a very interesting alternative. It stands out with an amazing price/quality ratio. Also remarkable is the operating system with a still unmatched multitasking ability. That means that several applications can run simultaneously, depending on available memory without slowing down the whole system. This is achieved by the smart resource sharing of the system and the low consumption of RAM and processing power by the applications. The Amiga operating system needs 8 times less memory than Windows, and it multitasks better than Windows. Through this smart use of system resources, the Amiga is still a very efficient and unexpensive computer. Video is another strength of the Amiga. In this aspect, the Amiga is superior to the PC. The video output of the Amiga is already PAL and NTSC compatible, so it can just be plugged into a TV or any video monitor. A PC needs a converter to do this. The Amiga represents a possibility to give people access to interactive television, online services and pay TV with set top boxes at decent prices like 400 DM. The market is huge because there are much more televisions than computers in the homes. The set top box is a concrete application involving Amiga technology that we want to improve. For the American market, which is much more advanced than in Europe in this regard, we already have license agreements with our partner VisCorp - our first licence by the way. We are willing to be very flexible and open-minded regarding licensing of our technology. Amiga developers and manufacturers shall have the chance to talk with us to define partnerships or license agreements. Together, we will develop a wide range of Amiga hardware and software. Our goal is a productive, open amiga technology. The example of Viscorp demonstrates it at best : we license Amiga technology to people who want to integrate it in their own products. The press already talked about another partner, the Tianjin Family-Used Multimedia Co. Ltd. They will build the lower range of Amiga computers and revive the legendary Commodore 64 for the chinese market. Ladies and gentlemen, we have mainly talked about the Amiga. In New York, we also took over another well known brand : Commodore. All of you surely remember the good old Commodore 64 and its tremendous success in the early eighties. It is still a famous episode in the home computer history that could be compared to the Volkswagen Beetle. A recent study made by the german economic magazine DM reveals that the name Commodore still has very high recognition. 93 percent of all PC users know the trademark Commodore. such a reputation is only surpassed by IBM. We will now separate Commodore and Amiga operations. Amiga will be the multimedia range with Motorola processors and Commodore for Intel based Personal Computers. We want to use all available and appropriate distribution channels both for Commodore and Amiga: specialized retail stores, warehouses, and mail order services. The ESCOM subsidiaries are only one of many possibilities. Ladies and gentlemen, we are convinced that ESCOM, Commodore and Amiga will become a sucess story. Look at the structure and competencies we have built up in a short time. Thank you. ********************************************************************* Petro Tyschtschenko Ladies and gentlemen, As the General manager of Amiga Technologies GmbH, I would like to welcome you to the first press conference of our new company and also tell you how much we appreciate your presence here. At a spectacular auction, five weeks ago in New York, ESCOM AG acquired the rights to the intellectual property of the former Commodore company for 10 Mio $, including all trademarks, logos, products and licences. Since the day we succeeded in buying the Amiga technology, many people have asked us how the future will look for their computer of choice. We got floods of anxious faxes and letters to which we couldn't give an answer at once because things were too early to comment. We will use the opportunity we have now to talk to all of you and present the new Escom daughtercompany, Amiga Technologies. Some leading developpers of hardware and software for the Amiga as well as some of our new licensing partners will present themselves and their projects to us. To clear up things from the beginning, - and that's the point you are all interested in - I want to make the comittment that we are determined to resume production and also want to continue hardware and software development of what we believe is a superior technology. That's why we created Amiga Technologies and we are now hiring the best and most capable people to accomplish this. For a sucessfull Multimedia company like ESCOM, the Commodore Patents and licences concerning Amiga are considered the key to multimedia technology. Mister Schmitt will say more about this later. But let's concentrate on our immediate plans. As the director of Amiga Technologies, my first priority now is to resume production of Commodore and Amiga computers and bring them on the market as soon as possible. For us, this means September 1995. I would also like to refer to Commodore computers, Pentium PCs, which will be available in August this year. These will be fully loaded P75 and P100 multimedia PCs. They will be assembled in our own ESCOM facilities. We plan to sell between 50 000 and 60 000 units before the end of this year. Let me point out that the Commodore and Amiga operations will be separate, Amiga Technologies will only take care of Amiga, whereas ESCOM will provide Commodore PCs. One month later, we will start producing the high-end multimedia Amiga 4000 T. To succeed in keeping that tight schedule, we negotiated with well known producers in Europe and Asia. For the selection of the manufacturing partner, we will be emphasizing the quality requirements. Until the end of the year, we plan to produce enough machines to meet the demand. These machines are already outsold in preorders. In October, the production of the low-end A1200 will begin. We expect to ship enough untis as well as CD 32 game consoles to meet the Christmas season demand. Please give us more time to publish quantities. The takeover of the inventory, which is mainly composed of spare parts, in the UK and Germany is completed. The rumoured stocks of new Amigas ready to be sold do not exist. For inventory in the Phillipines, we are currently negotiating with the local trustees. Ladies and gentlemen, the new Amiga Technology will now become the operating center of an international Company held 100% by ESCOM AG. Our headquarters in Bensheim will employ around 50 people for following tasks : development, support to developers, resellers, and users, production management, Marketing, PR and administration. We also took over the former Commodore development center in Norristown, with its research and development facilities. Eduard Goff, former Vice President and General counsel at Commodore now leads that center. He will talk to you later. Our developers are now working on the next generation RISC based Amigas as well as on improving current models. Here, we are working in a tight partnership with SCALA and MOTOROLA. Amiga Technologies GmbH expects a turnover of 100 Mio DM in 1995, mainly from the Christmas business with Amiga 1200, 4000 and CD32. Our monthly expenses are evaluated at around 600 000 DM. The break even point should be reached this year. We are confident that we will have rentabilized our 10 Mio $ investment by spring 1996 with Amiga sales and licences. Thank you. -- Gilles Bourdin / Amiga Technologies GmbH gbo@ramses.fdn.org gbo@worldnet.net