Article 97016 of comp.sys.amiga.misc: Path: news.PEAK.ORG!engr.orst.edu!reuter.cse.ogi.edu!news.ssd.intel.com!chnews!itnews.sc.intel.com!news.sprintlink.net!newsfeed.internetmci.com!in1.uu.net!svc.portal.com!portal.com!cup.portal.com!Harv From: Harv@cup.portal.com (Harv R Laser) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.misc Subject: Amiga Tech @ COMDEX/Fall, Vegas + 4 speeches (LONG) Date: 14 Nov 1995 21:00:06 -0800 Organization: The Portal System (TM) Lines: 617 Sender: pccop@unix.portal.com Message-ID: <147906@cup.portal.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: 156.151.4.12 Today I found Amiga Technologies GmbH's booth at COMDEX/Fall, in Las Vegas, the largest computer trade show ("faire" for you Euro types) in North America. About 200,000 people are expected to attend. AT's booth is attached to the Virtual I/O 3D glasses booth in the Sands Expo center, booth #3550. COMDEX runs Nov. 13-17 this year. Their booth space was small, but there they were, and that's the impootant thing. There were four A4000 towers, one with an 060, and as many A1200s set up. Two of the towers were driving lovely 21" monitors with Picasso cards. Sigh. What a glorious display that was. I sat down and had a yak with Gilles Bourdin, Amiga Tech's Press Relations guy, and Petro Tyschtschenko, their Managing Director. Also there was George Robbins, Jeff Frank, and Pia Brockmann, AT's Dir. of Marketing & Sales. Petro T as always looked and sounded very upbeat and friendly. He told me they've now sold 25,000 1200s in Europe/UK. Sold. To customers. Out the door. He said that they had tons of them at the just-concluded Computer Fair in Cologne ("Koln") Germany and people were buying them as fast as they could whip out the cash. Although I still couldn't get one of those nifty new Amiga posters (as seen in my recent VTU Expo photo-scan uploads), Gilles did give me a photo slide of it. Guess I'll take it to a photo store and get it made into a print and scan that, so we can have a decent head on, clean upload of it. They also gave me a pile of Amiga logo stickers.I was all set to slap one on my 1200 back at my hotel room but it's just a little to big to fit anywhere on the top of the case :-/ Petro told me that he had been interviewed by many computer journalists already, so hopefully this will turn into some good press coverage in upcoming issues of various magazines that are covering COMDEX and the zillions of new products that come out of this massive expo. Following my comments here I'm going to include four recent speeches by both Petro and Manfred Schmitt, who is Escom's president. These were handed to me by Gilles off his Escom (Intel) Laptop running Windows in German :) I shot a pic of him typing on it and he said "hey hey, no pictures of me using an 'IBM'" :) so maybe that one'll get uploaded and maybe it wont. I did shoot pics of their booth which will get scanned and uploaded after I return home in a few days. So there ya go.. yet another show report. Yet another day of Harv dragging his butt around millions of square feet of expo halls, and coming back to his hotel room to collapse. :) Harv | "Do you recognize the harv@cup.portal.com | Bell of Truth when you http://www.portal.com/~harv | hear it ring?" hlaser@eworld.com <--- Newton mail only! | - Leon Russell --- Manfred Schmitt 11/11/95 Amiga-Messe Ladies and Gentlemen, Since we have many guests from outside of Germany here, this conference is going to be held in English. My name is Manfred Schmitt, I am founder and chairman of ESCOM AG. I would like to welcome you to this software evening and also thank you very much for attending. You surely all know ESCOM as one of the leading PC retailers in Europe. In the past fiscal year 1994, we had a turnover of 1.85 billion Deutschmarks, employed 2300 people and sold 410.000 PC's throughout Europe. With 450 outlets, we cover 9 european countries. Core markets are Germany, where we run some 140 shops, and Great Britain. In the UK, we are the biggest dedicated PC retailer with 200 shops by the end of the year. But PC dealer is no longer the appropriate term that characterizes our business. Our strategy is changing from a mere PC retailer into a multimedia company. And on this path, the acquisition of the intellectual property of Commodore and Amiga half a year ago was an important milestone. You surely might confirm that Amiga is a leverage for the growing multimedia market. And you might also ask me what the guys from ESCOM have done in the past months with the Amiga and what they are going to do in the near future. Amiga Technologies has grown to a small but efficient multinational company and now employs 40 people. The Amiga product range is back on the market as announced and distributed in more than 20 countries. This, Ladies and Gentlemen, is the result of the determination, motivation and competence from the Amiga team, led by Petro Tyschtschenko and Stefan Domeyer. The plans have been respected. Congratulations to all of them. We all know, the Amiga is an amazing computer. It is even more than just a computer. It is an institution with user groups, a community, fans and even lovers. There are Amiga-fairs, Amiga-magazines, Amiga clubs, even T-shirts and tea cups ! Usually, in the computer business, when the leading product disappears, the market collapses immediately. The Amiga was gone for one and a half year but the market, even if it shrunk a bit, was still there and remained significant. This is something that is quite remarkable. It shows the quality of the Amiga-concept and the dedication of the user-base. I think that some of our competitors are underestimating the power and potential of what the name Amiga represents. We do not. We perfectly know what we have and believe me, ladies and gentlemen, we are going to make something out of it! The Amiga is not only gifted by its user-community, it also has one of the best developer bases. Public domain and shareware programs on the Amiga are better and the quantity available is unmatched on other platforms. The utility of such a developer community dedicated to the Amiga is evident. It provides good software and very often, commercial products emerge and expand the software-market. This is something essential and therefore, developer support is one of our top-priorities. It will be mainly available as on-line services via Web pages or FTP servers. We intend to simplify as much as possible the certification procedures. Please feel free to ask for information during the fair at our booth or later this evening during the questions and answer session. The person to contact is Mr Hohmann. We also set up contacts with software-editing companies to make sure that their development for Amiga products is resumed. New contacts to non-Amiga editors are also on our todo list. Since we started-up the Amiga operations, there have been several rumours about our future plans. One of these rumours said that Amiga is just a quick shot for the Christmas season and that the project would be dropped shortly afterwards. Ladies and gentlemen, this is most certainly a dream of the competition! Indeed, Amiga is not a short-term project, it is a strategic element in our multimedia strategy as I mentionned before. To give the Amiga the future it deserves, as a major platform for Multimedia, video and 3D applications, it is necessary to upgrade its present capacities. That's why we have decided to leave the Motorola 68000 range of processors and upgrade the system with the power PC processor next year. The future machines will of course run with Amiga OS. The choice of the Power PC was made for its speed, and also because it is actually the only RISC processor that is currently used in personal computers, which will insure us that needed quantities will be available at attractive prices on a mass market. Amiga OS is actually what makes the strength of the platform it runs on. We are aware that we have an operating system that has real multitasking from the beginning without the need of excessive amounts of memory like other operating systems. This is the reason why we will concentrate on improving and porting Amiga OS to other processors. It is the best way to enlarge the installed base and to gain market shares over Windows and Macintosh systems. The implementation of the Power PC processor will be a first step in that direction. Later, this processor will replace the 68000 chips in the rest of the Amiga product range. This is possible thanks to the range of versions that Motorola provides, from the 602 up to the 604. Multimedia does not only mean sound and Animation but also communication. We will use the Amiga-technology to provide very cost effective on-line solutions. These can be marketed as set-top boxes or as Amiga computers equipped with the necessary hard- and software. To be a player in the on-line market, one has also to provide on-line-services like Web pages or FTP servers for the Internet. This has already been done for Amiga, Commodore and ESCOM. Our customers can now use the Internet to find information and support for the computer they are using. The actual computer market is widely occupied by Intel and Microsoft platforms. We think that this combination is not satisfying for all uses. There is a strong market for the home computing below 1000 DM. For Internet surfing, spending 2500 DM for a PC is not what I would call a home oriented solution. These are definitely market segments where the Amiga 1200 can be more competitive. Ladies and Gentlemen, I hope that this meeting will be a start-up for a good co-operation between Amiga Technologies and software publishers. Thank you for your attention. ---------------------------------- Koln 11/11 Ladies and Gentlemen, Thank you very much for attending this software evening, it is nice to see so many people interested in developing software on the Amiga. Amiga Technologies began as a production company in May 1995. Its goal was then to ramp up the production of Amiga computers to bring them back onto the market. We have done it. Then, as soon as the products were available, Amiga Technologies evolved to a computer sales company to distribute its products world-wide. We had to meet the demand that has been waiting for more than one year. We have done it. Now, Amiga is turning into a true Computer manufacturer, we are finally building up our Research and Development team in Bensheim. We are hiring former Commodore engineers as well as new talented people to be able to respect the announced schedules for the Power Amiga. Lets do it! Ladies and Gentlemen, we want to show our commitment to the Amiga platform, not as a quick money maker for the Christmas season, but as one of the most important strategic challenges in the ESCOM group. Amiga shall become the best platform for Multimedia, 3D software, graphics processing, Internet and many more applications. The software market is always looking for powerful platforms. Especially 3D software needs great amounts of MIPS. This is going to be addressed first with the 060 board that we will market in early 96. Then, in 1st quarter 97, the Power PC 604 will replace the 060 in the new high-end model. Of course, the operating system will have to be ported to the new RISC-Processor. This will be done internally at Amiga Technologies by our R&D department. In the meantime, there will also be new products based on the A1200 concept. We plan to present the A1200 + in May. This model will feature either the Coldfire processor from Motorola, or the 68030 at 40 MHz. SIMM sockets will be integrated directly on the motherboard to allow easy memory expansion. The A1200 + is scheduled for the CEBIT in March 96. Another product will be the black box. This is a set top box that will feature an enhanced A1200 core, along with all connectors needed for communication, printing, audio in and out and a remote control. It will have a HI-FI-like design that will be created by Frog design. The product will of course be equipped with a CD ROM drive and a floppy disk drive. We are also making an Internet package with all software needed to become an unbeatable surfer. These networking features are planned to be part of the OS in a near future. It will first be marketed as a complete package including modem and cables, with the software preinstalled on the harddrive. A plug and play solution. We also plan the Q-Drive to be available shortly after the fair. This quad speed CD ROM drive plugs into the PCMCIA connector and is provided with software to enable it to play CD 32 titles. Ladies and Gentlemen, as you can see, the Amiga family will become larger very soon. To welcome these products that will without doubt be very successful on the market, we want to encourage you to produce software for them. We now have a developer support set up and running. Let me tell you a few words about its organisation. There will be a secured section on the WEB server, only accessible to registered developers. The address of the WEB server is www.amiga.de We will have two types of developers: Non-commercial and commercial developers. To become a non-commercial developer, the candidate has to show an existing program or product, even public domain. The annual fee is 100 USD. For becoming a commercial developer, one has to provide proof of a commercial product, either completed or in advanced stage of development. The fee for becoming a commercial developer is 300 USD a year. Former registered Commodore developers will have to register again with Amiga Technologies. This is necessary for us because we do not have the complete Commodore developer database and also because an Amiga Technologies NDA has to be signed. All developers will also have access to the beta versions of the AMIGA OS for testing purposes, they will have access to development tools, to hardware documentation and to our restricted newsgroups. Developers will also have special purchase conditions on Amiga hardware. There will also be a periodical newsletter. The support for developers will be accessible from the Internet and through a closed network as in former Commodore times. If you have further questions about software support, you are welcome to ask after the session. We know that there are many people who are convinced that Amiga is the best system and those people believe in the Amiga platform as well as we do. This, Ladies and Gentlemen is very encouraging for us. I believe that most of the people attending here are Amiga enthusiastic and am glad to see such a strong commitment. There is one thing I would like to tell you: write software for the Amiga, Amiga will help you to do this. We managed to revive the Amiga hardware Now it's to you, together with us, to revive its software. Negotiations with many software houses world-wide have started. Our common goal should be to strengthen the Amiga software platform for the future. Please take this message: Amiga is working tightly together with hardware companies to get new extensions, license our technology and create new exciting products. We are motivated by the success we had with our current models and look forward to bring you new products very soon. Thank you for your attention. (the speech immediatley above was by Petro T. at the Cologne fair) -------------------------------------------------- Speech Petro Tyschtschenko Bradford Ladies and Gentlemen, distinguished guests. I am pleased to be here at our first common press conference with Microvitec. My name is Petro Tyschtschenko, I am President at Amiga Technologies GmbH. The company was founded in May 1995, just after ESCOM AG acquired the rights to the technology and patents of the former Commodore Company. Amiga Technologies GmbH is a 100% subsidiary of ESCOM AG. ESCOM AG is a public company. 25 % belongs to Quelle [explain], 10 % to Siemens-Nixdorf, 12,5 % to RWE [explain], 38,5 % to Manfred Schmitt, founder and chairman of the board, 14 % splitted to other shareholders. You surely have heard about the last ESCOM deal in the UK concerning the Rumbelows shops. Before working at ESCOM AG, during my time at Commodore, for 12 years, when I was Director for international logistics, I always used to trade with manufacturers and accessory providers in the far-east. Commodore partners in this regard were notorious companies like Hyundai, Samsung, Daewoo or Philips, all famous names in the monitor business. Logically, the first thing I did when I began setting up the operations of Amiga Technologies GmbH was to revive my contacts. According to asian courtesy, I got many promises to help Amiga and to send propositions. I am known as being an impatient man. I wondered if there wasn't a possible solution in Europe. In the Amiga-Magazines I saw advertisements for Microvitec Monitors and was surprised because I knew the name from the banking and industrial sector. In Munich, at a big press meeting, I had the opportunity to talk to many people from the monitor and Amiga busines, and I heard many positive comments about Microvitec. This convinced me to keep heading towards a european solution. I arranged meetings in Bensheim with Mr H President at Microvitec Germany and adressed him our technical requirements, prices and quantities for an Amiga monitor. I quickly understood that the Microvitec deal would be the best solution from the technical point of view. Instead of choosing a low cost product, I decided to go for the mid-level and to prefer good quality. Another advantage with Microvitec:was the location in Europe, our main Amiga market. This was going to enhance our logistics tremendeously and keep costs at a low level! Now, ladies and Gentlemen, we decided to call the monitor "M1438S. The initials stand for Monitor and Stereo. 14 represents the size and 38 means that the monitor can sync all horizontal frequencies from 15 to 38 Kilohertz. This is just what is needed for a multimedia computer like the Amiga. We already got very satisfying tests in the Amiga-press. A little restriction concerning the use with genlocks has been detected but Microvitec engineers are already working on it. Distribution Our first deliveries of the M1438S began in mid-September. After a few startup difficulties, we have everything under control. For the last quarter 1995, we will have sold all forecasted 15000 units. For the UK market, we can ship directly from the Bradford facility, which saves us time and money. The deliveries for continental Europe are made from our service-and-spare-center in Braunschweig. As you can see, ladies and Gentlemen, Logistics is an important thing for us and I think the we have reached quite an acceptable level of optimization here. Now, let's talk about our plans for 1996. What shall we do? Go back for far east production or continue our cooperation with Microvitec? The decission has been taken...................... Well, Ladies and Gentlemen, we decided to continue the british experience, how could it be otherwise? For us, of course, the price question is an important one. But I am convinced that Microvitec will be very cooperative on this issue, we are currently discussing this. Concerning the product range, we think of three different models. For the first quarter, we will continue with the 14 inch model. For the CEBIT fair in Hannover, we have a 15 and 17 inch model on schedule. Our goal is also to replace the 14 inch by the 15 inch model as soon as possible, during the second quarter, and this without increasing the price. Ladies and gentlemen, we know that the 17 inch monitor will be a breakthrough in the Amiga market. We allready presented first prototyspe samples at the IFA fair in Berlin and the great response from the public convinced us to market it as soon as possible. Be aware: this monitor is able to adapt itself automaticcaly to horizontal frequencies from 15 up to 64 Kilohertz. This monitor can be used on high end Amigas fitted with 64 bit graphic boards and can display video as well as high resolution VGA screens. There is actually no competition for this product on the market and we know that our Amiga monitor will be appreciated by those who do video applications, even on the PC and Macintosh side. Our forecasts for 1996 are set on 60.000 monitors, which will represent a turnover of about 20 million UK Pounds. We will begin with 10.000 14 inch models during the first quarter, negociations are still being made for the forthcoming quarters. Ladies and gentlemen, as you might allready know, we will not only sell monitors. We plan to bring 100.000 Amiga 1200 and 20.000 Amiga 4000 T on the market. Regarding the 060 Motorola board for the Amiga 4000 T, I'm afraid that we will have delays until next year, dued to availability difficulties with Motorola and other component providers. Our turnover at Amiga Technologies will be around 100 Million DM, which is about 45 Million UK Pounds. For the coming year, I will not make any comittments but if everything keeps going as well as this year, we expect to ship 500.000 Amiga 1200 and 50.000 Amiga 4000T. Since then, there will also be new models available in the entry-level as well as in the mid-range. We also intend to present our new A1200 CD-ROM drive on the Amiga fair in Colone. Ladies and Gentlemen, we are very pleased that we could contribute to increase the utilization of industrial capacity in Bradford. We hope that this will also help to improve the social situation here. We think that with our action based on "european location and partners", we showed that a computer manufacturer can be competitive without having to transfer ist production to the far east, like Commodore did. We think that we are quite innovative in this regard and we hope that our experience will be followed by other computer manufacturers. Our main market is currently Europe. But there is also a great potential in the United States. In our forecasts, we did not include America because we are currently in negociations with distributors and future partners to find a solution to cover the north-American market. These negociationas are quite promising. One of the distributors overseas has allready ordered 500 monitors. Ladies and Gentlemen, we are proud to export british Monitors to the USA and I will make you a confidence about one of my dreams I am about to realize: To export european made monitors to Asia. This would indeed be a nice reward for the excellent work made by Microvitec and Amiga Technologies. Thank you for your attention. ---------------------------------------------------------- Speech Petro Tyschtschenko - Press conference Bordeaux Ladies and Gentlemen, distinguished guests Good afternoon... Welcome to our first press conference here with Solectron and thank you very much for attending. Let me introduce myself, my name is Petro Tyschtschenko, I am the president at Amiga Technologies GmbH. I have the great pleasure to be here to tell you about the backgrounds of the Amiga rebirth. Amiga is back, back for the future. It finally happened ! Amiga is back on the market. This was an amazing task to accomplish and many people from several companies helped to make impossible things possible. I would like to thank the people from Solectron for their involvement, their competence and professionalism. What they achieved in the last two months is truly an exceptional logistic performance. I would also like to thank Motorola for their precious help and cooperation in making the rebirth of the Amiga possible. Thanks to Mitsumi for supplying us just in time our special Amiga keyboards. Thank you also to Microvitec, who I believe provided us the best Amiga monitor ever. As you can see, the Amiga project involved several companies in a remarkable team and the ambitious goal was reached in time. Our Amiga story began in 1985. The first Amiga was presented in New York. Since then, it has established itself as the platform of those who want true multitasking and integrated Multimedia. More, ladies and gentlemen than just typing letters or numbers on a PC. Amiga Technologies GmbH is a 100% subsidiary of ESCOM AG. ESCOM AG is a public company. 25 % belongs to Quelle, 10 % to Siemens-Nixdorf, 12,5 % to RWE, 38,5 % to Manfred Schmitt, founder and chairman of the board, 14 % split to other shareholders. Amiga Technologies GmbH was founded in May 1995. We are a young company but we already have historical dates : here is the first Amiga 1200 board made by Solectron. which I just received from Mister Gallant. It came out of the line on the 13th of September 1995. A rebirth in France. To be quite honest this one was faulty, it had two condensators soldered with reverse polarity. This board functioned only a few minutes. But the error was recognized quickly... fixed... and for the forthcoming boards, all tests passed successfully. Be aware: For all machines, we do systematic testing on each unit. Now lets talk about the story of the Amiga rebirth: Everything began in June 1995, after ESCOM AG acquired the rights to the Amiga Technology from the former Commodore company. I went to the Far East first to the Philippines, Cavite, the city where the old Commodore company had a manufacturing facility. My goal was to make sure that we could get the component stocks left there by Commodore. Everything there was an enormous mess and nightmare, nothing was organized. I have had first doubts that we never could do it at all. June: raining season in the Philippines Typhoons time and floods. Pinatubo ? quiet, thank god. But I didn't give up and with the help of Mr. Gwynne Thomas, who I'd like to thank for the wonderful job he made, we succeeded in making things move in this complicated component business. Taylor made Amiga components were gathered together through liquidators all around the world and shipped from the Far East to Europe and the USA. It was really a difficult task. Originally, it was planned to produce Amigas in the United Kingdom, because there were people there that had great experience with Amiga production. But we finally decided to go for a partnership with Solectron here in France. We didn't leave the UK though, since we have our partner Microvitec for Monitors. Our M1438S monitor has already been celebrated by the Amiga-press for its perfect compatibility with Amiga video-modes. There will be a press conference in Bradford on the 17th of October to celebrate this cooperation. Bordeaux is perfect for us. Not only the wine, we also appreciate the pleasant surroundings and the competencies of the people at Solectron. Solectron, maybe you have noticed this already, won the Malcolm Baldridge National Quality Award, which guaranteed us that our machines would be reliable. Now that the first units went over the shelves and that we get the first positive impressions from our customers, we know that we have made the right choice. I have learned here in Bordeaux: "impossible n'est pas Solectron". Our Amiga production that has been set to 100.000 units for the three last months of 1995 is already sold out in preorders. All these machines will be produced in Bordeaux. We are pleased by the demand from our dealers. We are also pleased to hear from the Amiga press that they are flooded with phone calls from people who want to know where they can get Amigas. To satisfy this demand, our logistic system is working perfectly. We can ship directly from Bordeaux to our different customers. Indeed, with such a system, we are a sales company and not a warehouse company. This enables us to keep down stock costs to a minimum. Ladies and gentlemen, as I said before, this is a very special day for my team and myself, we are proud that we did it. I am very satisfied of the people at Amiga Technologies, who were available anytime during four months to help building up our company. In spite of all the rumors spread by doomsayers on the market, we respected the schedules and the Amiga is back as promised. I would also like to thank the Amiga press for their support and the Amiga users for their endless patience. "AMIGA 95 SERA LE CRU DE LA RENAISSANCE"