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1996-01-21
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7KB
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149 lines
Speech by Manfred Schmitt at Software Evening of Computer 95
Köln (Cologne), 11.11.95
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Ladies and Gentlemen,
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 cou ntries. 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
AmigaOS.
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.
AmigaOS 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 AmigaOS 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 supp ort 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.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright 1995 by AMIGA Technologies GmbH - Editor: Dr. Peter Kittel
Send comments to <webmaster@amiga.de> - Date: 20.11.95
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