Article 88463 of comp.sys.amiga.hardware:
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From: dave.haynie@scala.com (Dave Haynie)
Subject: Re: Haynie comment on buyout?
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Message-ID: <1995Apr26.205054.20998@scala.scala.com>
Date: Wed, 26 Apr 1995 20:50:54 GMT
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Reply-To: dave.haynie@scala.com (Dave Haynie)
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Organization: Scala Inc., US Research & Development

In <3ngmos$k2j@news.dknet.dk>, nilo@login.dknet.dk (Nicolai Thilo) writes:
>Dave, would you care to share your thoughts about the ESCOM buyout?

It's a hard call for me, since I don't know ESCOM that well. From what
I have heard of them, they're probably in a better position than any
of the other contenders, unless CEI really had managed to get Dell
involved. And maybe, even then. The Amiga was always far better
established in Europe, now it's European owned. ESCOM has stores, so
they don't have to fight to get shelf space. They're already in the PC
business, though I gather most of their stuff is made on contract. 
Even at that, they have some sort of infrastructure already in place;
the others would probably have to develop one. 

Of course, who knows what they're planning to do with the Amiga. I
suspect the partners in China are hungry for the low end video
games. The Chinese home market is still virtually untapped by the West
or the East, and I gather is largely populated by a ripoff, er, clone
of the 8-bit Nintendo. A low cost 32-bit system now, with some promise
of even better things to come, would probably be good for a few
million units a year in China alone. 

For the native market, NOW would be a good time to make sure there's
something for the home other than PClones. Windows 95 will up the ante
on what functions as a base-level home PC, no matter what Microsoft
claims as a minimum configuration. So will OS/2 Warp, if that picks up
in popularity. There's a market for something else, though I expect
they'll get more trouble from game machines, since a large majority of
home buyers expect to play games. I think a low cost CD-ROM, as add-on
or built-in, is essential to the revamped A1200 (however they revamp
it); CD-ROM is to 1990s computers what floppies were to the Apple II
and C64. 

They need to get aggressive on new development. That's where I wonder
about ESCOM. Far as I know, none of the Amiga Engineers have been
contacted by ESCOM, not that any would move to Germany. If ESCOM has
been farming everything out, they're not set up to do internal
development. And to most PC makers, "internal development" means, at
best, deciding who's glue chip set they like the best and making their
own PCB from the manufacturer's reference design. This doesn't take an
Engineer, a good technician can do it. Continued Amiga development,
hardware and software, is two orders of Engineering magnitude above
this.

So I wonder what they're up for...

Dave Haynie          | ex-Commodore Engineering |  See my first film
Sr. Systems Engineer |      Class of '94        | "The Deathbed Vigil"
Scala Inc., US R&D   | C= Failure n. See: Greed |     info@iam.com

 "Caught a bolt of lightning, cursed the day he let it go" -Pearl Jam