Computer Industry United States

Corollary Inc., an Irvine manufacturer of various products that boost the performance of personal computers, is something of a behind-the-scenes player in the computer industry. Corollary makes a cache system, or hardware that moves data from one part of a computer to another. It enables PC makers to build more powerful multiprocessing computers, or computers that use several processors instead of a single processor to perform computing tasks faster.

The crumbling $25-billion merger plan of Hewlett-Packard Co. and Compaq Computer Corp. may be signaling that America's personal computer industry is nearing the end of its era, analysts and economists say.

Allen Z. Loren, president of Apple Computer Inc.'s U.S. operations, has resigned less than two weeks after the personal computer pioneer announced plunging profits and pending layoffs. Analysts speculated that the departure of Loren, who had once been seen as a potential successor to Apple Chairman John Sculley, could be the beginning of a shake-up of the company's U.S. operations.

The annals of auto manufacturing are filled with legendary but long-departed names: Studebaker, Duesenberg, Packard and Rambler. As the personal computer industry endures one of its toughest periods, experts are beginning to wonder whether the PC graveyard might soon include such names as Gateway, Compaq or even IBM.

Reflecting the fact that low prices no longer distinguish one personal-computer maker from another, Orange County's largest computer company is turning for the first time to an outside advertising agency to help it shape its corporate image. AST Research Inc. in Irvine, which up to now has depended on its own marketing department for all of its advertising, has hired Team One Advertising, a subsidiary of ad giant Saatchi & Saatchi.

Messages flashing on the Macintosh computer screens at the offices of San Francisco/Moscow Teleport tell of tanks rumbling through Moscow and crowds massed in the streets shouting support for Boris Yeltsin and other opponents of the right-wing coup. "We are ready to give the hunta (sic) an airplane so they would fly away from our country," one politician is quoted as telling the gathering.

Joseph F. Engelberger--who in 1961 founded Unimation, America's first robotics company--credits Isaac Asimov's robot stories for his intellectual inspiration. Since childhood, artificial life pioneer J. Doyne Farmer has been tantalized by "The Last Question," an Asimov short story that offers a particularly novel hypothesis of how life in the universe begins. Danny Hillis, who has designed some of the fastest supercomputers in the world for Thinking Machines Corp.

In the classic tradition of the Silicon Valley entrepreneur, Gordon Campbell has struck it rich in the computer chip business. The company he founded less than six years ago, Chips & Technologies, had sales of nearly $300 million last year, and Campbell himself has amassed a fortune. But unlike traditional semiconductor companies, Chips & Technologies does not actually manufacture anything.

The alliance of International Business Machines and Apple Computer could cleave the computer industry, assuring some companies of key roles in determining the future of computing and forcing others to scramble for survival, industry analysts said Wednesday. Skeptics said IBM and Apple's attempt to develop a new generation of universally compatible personal computers will take several years.

Government lawyers spent a second day Friday questioning Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates in preparation for a trial next month of their antitrust suit against the software giant. Gates, the world's richest man with more than an estimated $50 billion in assets, was questioned for nine hours Friday in a conference room at the company's headquarters near Seattle.

What difference does the outcome of the Microsoft Corp. antitrust case make to you? Well, plenty. But there won't be any real outcome here for quite some time. And that's bad for the computer industry, which can't make long-term plans until everybody has a vague idea of whether Microsoft will even continue to exist in its current form.

It appears that the personal computer boom is finally over. After five years of stunning growth, the last three months of this year are showing the first fourth-quarter drop in U.S. retail sales of PCs since 1995. PC sales are expected to plummet 15% this quarter from a year earlier, according to PC Data of Reston, Va.

During the Democratic Party convention here, we're not likely to hear much detail about the candidates' plans for science and technology policy. That would make even the most dedicated convention watchers reach for their TV remotes. But future science and technology policy will be an important centerpiece of many campaign issues, especially given Vice President Al Gore's history of running as a candidate of and for high tech.

In an ominous sign for PC vendors, U.S. sales of desktop computers have slowed sharply in the last three months as corporate customers debate whether to upgrade and consumers ponder the need for expensive replacements. Although quarterly data from research firms Dataquest and IDC differed by several percentage points on an increase in worldwide sales, both firms' data suggested U.S. sales continue to drag as relatively cheap, powerful PCs saturate the market.

If John Shin has his way, "Internet stations" or kiosks one day will be as ubiquitous as pay telephones and automated teller machines--and the base of a new Internet-generated industry. The 32-year-old attorney heads up Web-On-Site Inc., one of a surge of start-ups that aim to make money by charging advertisers to get their messages in front of highly targeted demographic groups, such as well-to-do ski buffs and college-educated young workers.

Few people know more about China's piracy of U.S. software than the Americans who have lost money from it. "They not only copied our software," said John Chen, chief executive of Sybase, a global software firm based in the Bay Area. "They were exporting it to Southeast Asia. You could see pirated copies in Singapore, Hong Kong and Malaysia."

Hoping to revive its faltering computer business, Toshiba America Information Systems today plans to unveil a lightweight notebook computer with an advanced color display said to match the quality of desktop machines. The T4400SXC computer will be the flagship model in Toshiba's effort to remain the leader in the $1.4-billion portable computer market. Toshiba America, an Irvine-based subsidiary of Japan's Toshiba Corp., is unveiling the model at the Comdex computer trade show in Chicago.

Despite official satisfaction in Washington over the global trade accord known as GATT, one important U.S. high-tech industry reserved judgment Tuesday because a key issue over intellectual property rights remained unresolved. Semiconductor makers, many of them based in California's Silicon Valley, said U.S. trade officials gained ground on their behalf in late negotiating rounds in Geneva.

After years of sending high-tech production work abroad, U.S. companies are increasingly shipping sophisticated software development and other engineering jobs overseas because they can't find enough qualified workers here. The escalated hiring of brainpower abroad, however, is carrying with it concerns about efficiency, management and the spontaneous creativity that comes from having employees working on projects together in the same place.

Unfortunately, all you kid money managers, the shares of everything from Sun Microsystems Inc. to JDS Uniphase Corp. to General Electric Co. still cost too much. That might not seem possible after the latest bear-market-in-a-flash clipped 34.2% off the tech-happy Nasdaq composite index in five weeks. But at $76.50, Sun Microsystems stock is still priced at 87 times its earnings for the latest 12 months.