On March 27th 1997, Gateway 2000 made a succesful bid for the assets of Amiga technologies,
including all patents, trademarks and trade names. This bid was accepted by the
court-appointed liquidator of Escom, the former parent company of Amiga Technologies
which when into bankruptcy in July of 1996.
The deal is subject to German regulatory approval but this is not expected to be a problem. Amiga Technologies will be renamed Amiga International and the company will continue to operate as a separate business unit. Petro Tyschtschenko will remain at the helm of the division and will also work to develop new products for the Amiga market. At this stage Gateway 2000 have not made clear their intentions with regard to the Amiga acquisition. As the deal awaited final rubber-stamping from a German trade regulator, neither Gateway 2000 nor Mr Tyschtschenko were willing to comment or speculate specifically on how this would affect the future of the Amiga name, the existing Amiga technology or future Amiga developments.
Gateway also added,
Since the introduction of the Amiga 1000 in 1985, Amiga has represented the
embodiment of the efficient use of memory and hard drive capacity, while pioneering
industry developments in multimedia, 32-bit multi-tasking and autoconfiguration.
Gateway 2000 will give us new life and energy for the future.
Petro Tyschtschenko, President of Amiga Technologies.
While VIScorp had intended to use the innards of the A1200 as a TV-based Internet terminal and QuikPak wanted to make their own VideoToaster-A4000T hybrids, Gateway 2000's plans for the Amiga are still under wraps, paving the way for a glut of rumours and debates from all corners of the Amiga community. Possible outcomes include a repeat re-launch of the A1200 and A4000T, the production of Amiga emulator cards for PCs, development of the Amiga operating system for use with current or future platforms, or even the re-launch of the A1200 to be sold into 'developing' countries such as China and Russia. These are some of the theories which will circulate as rumours until there is some official word from Gateway 2000. See the reverse of this page for more on the possibile ramifications and a potted history of Gateway 2000.
This exciting development is bound to rejuvinate the Amiga scene, whatever plans Gateway 2000 may have for our favourite machine.
The Amiga's new owner, Gateway 2000, is a relatively young company. Set up in 1985,
it's a manufacturer and direct seller of PC clones aimed at the business and high end
markets. Gateway 2000 is based in North Sioux City, South Dakota, USA. Strong branding
has helped Gateway establish itself as a respected name in the PC arena; most Gateway
products come packaged in their trademark black and white 'jersey cow' pattern.
Despite Gateway's youth, it reported a phenomenal 1996 revenue total of $5 billion, with a profit of $250 million. It employs over 9,700 people worldwide, who helped shift 1.9 millions computer systems during 1996. This is some achievement considering the company was started just 12 years ago by partners Ted Waitt and Mike Hammond, selling hardware and software for Texas Instruments PCs through mail order ads in computer magazines. This lead to the company moving into direct sales of their own pre-configured PC compatibles and settling at their current base in South Dakota.
Further expansions have seen Gateway set up branches in Ireland, Australia, additional USA sites, Malaysia and most recently Cyprus.
In 1996 Gateway introduced their 'Destination' system, a PC with a big screen designed to combine the emerging home cinema wide-screen TV market with that of the home computer.
At best, Gateway could develop that next generation Amiga and sell it for an amazingly
low price. At worst, they could simply use the Amiga name as a badge for a range of
multimedia-oriented PC clones, or even just auction off the Amiga's operating system
to the likes of Phase 5 and PIOS.
Probably the biggest indicator of Gateway's intentions is their comment about the Amiga being a pioneer in efficient memory use, multitasking, multimedia and autoconfiguration. To a PC market used to lavish memory use, infamous configuation nightmares and an operating system that has only just recently become user-friendly, those sound like very attractive properties. If a new computer system could be developed which was a step above the current state of the art, with the added advantage of super-efficiency and ease of use, it would surely be a winner. However, the existing Amiga hardware itself could not be used for such a platform, but perhaps the concepts behind it could be, and certainly the operating system has bags of potential.
On the other hand, it could be that Gateway has done some sums and found that it can produce low-cost Amigas or Amiga clones. If that was the case, they would have a route into the currently unserviced sub-ú1000 computer market, not just in Europe and the USA but also China, Russia and other emerging economies.
More likely is the ease at which a network computer could be built from certain aspects of the Amiga, mainly the operating system. Such a machine would be used as one of many terminals connected to a central server. Software would be run on the server, controlled from the terminal, with a link that could be local or even the Internet. With Microsoft still working on a such a system and attempting to stall the world to wait for its own 'standard', hats would go off to any company that could steal a march on them. When probed on the possible resurrection of the Walker, the super-Amiga that never made it further than a couple of Amiga shows, Petro Tyschtschenko would not rule it out.
Since the announcement of the deal, reaction from all corners of the Amiga fraternity has been positive but quietly cautious. With fresh memories of the Escom chapter that never quite hit top gear, it seems the champange is still on ice, but the glasses are being polished in anticipation of the next big thing.
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