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From: gbo@worldnet.net (Gilles Bourdin)
Message-Id: <2fce68b8@worldnet.net>
Subject: Amiga Press release
Date: 01 Jun 95 19:26:16 CET
Organization: Private Leon site France
X-Mailer: AmiGate 1.3a (24.3.95)
Reply-To: gbo@worldnet.net
To: zerkle@toadflax.cs.ucdavis.edu
Status: RO
* This message forwarded from area 'Courrier Worldnet' (NET_2_999_99_9)
* Original message dated 01 Jun 95, from Gilles Bourdin
Hi, here are the speeches of Manfred Schmitt and Petro Tyschtschenko at the
Amiga press conference in Frankfurt. You can post this wherever you like.
Frankfurt/Main, May 30, 1995
Speech of Manfred Schmitt
Escom AG
Chairman of the Executive Board
Ladies and gentlemen,
Since we won the auction for the intellectual property of Commodore and
Amiga, the ESCOM AG is flooded with congratulation messages. Amiga clubs and
Amiga users write to ask us to revive and continue to develop and improve the
Amiga. Many of them actually sent us their wishes for future hardware
architectures and operating systems improvements.
However, it is still unclear for many users how a PC manufacturer and
retailer will use the Amiga technology.
Here is our answer:
ESCOM now turns from a PC manufacturer and retailer into a multimedia
company. The big multimedia applications will come very soon as Pay-TV, Video
on demand, homebanking, home-shopping and online services. In this growing
market, we want to become a leading provider of hardware, software and
solutions. Our goal is to give the user a cost-efficient way to access all
these new services the multimedia world will allow. The Amiga technology
brings us all we need here in an elegant way. We see in the Amiga the key to
Multimedia technologies for the future.
As an intelligent terminal, you all know the PC. Many people use the PC in
conjunction with a modem to access online services and the worldwide
Internet. Escom is providing that market with a wide palette of
advantageoulsy priced Multimedia PCs in a range between 2000 and 3000 DM.
But there are other user profiles, who want to use the multimedia technology
without having to spend several thousands of DM. For these users, the Amiga
represents a very interesting alternative. It stands out with an amazing
price/quality ratio. Also remarkable is the operating system with a still
unmatched multitasking ability. That means that several applications can run
simultaneously, depending on available memory without slowing down the whole
system. This is achieved by the smart resource sharing of the system and the
low consumption of RAM and processing power by the applications.
The Amiga operating system needs 8 times less memory than Windows, and it
multitasks better than Windows. Through this smart use of system resources,
the Amiga is still a very efficient and unexpensive computer.
Video is another strength of the Amiga. In this aspect, the Amiga is
superior to the PC. The video output of the Amiga is already PAL and NTSC
compatible, so it can just be plugged into a TV or any video monitor. A PC
needs a converter to do this. The Amiga represents a possibility to give
people access to interactive television, online services and pay TV with set
top boxes at decent prices like 400 DM. The market is huge because there are
much more televisions than computers in the homes.
The set top box is a concrete application involving Amiga technology that we
want to improve. For the American market, which is much more advanced than in
Europe in this regard, we already have license agreements with our partner
VisCorp - our first licence by the way. We are willing to be very flexible
and open-minded regarding licensing of our technology. Amiga developers and
manufacturers shall have the chance to talk with us to define partnerships or
license agreements. Together, we will develop a wide range of Amiga hardware
and software. Our goal is a productive, open amiga technology. The example of
Viscorp demonstrates it at best : we license Amiga technology to people who
want to integrate it in their own products. The press already talked about
another partner, the Tianjin Family-Used Multimedia Co. Ltd. They will build
the lower range of Amiga computers and revive the legendary Commodore 64 for
the chinese market.
Ladies and gentlemen, we have mainly talked about the Amiga. In New York, we
also took over another well known brand : Commodore. All of you surely
remember the good old Commodore 64 and its tremendous success in the early
eighties. It is still a famous episode in the home computer history that
could be compared to the Volkswagen Beetle. A recent study made by the german
economic magazine DM reveals that the name Commodore still has very high
recognition. 93 percent of all PC users know the trademark Commodore. such a
reputation is only surpassed by IBM.
We will now separate Commodore and Amiga operations. Amiga will be the
multimedia range with Motorola processors and Commodore for Intel based
Personal Computers. We want to use all available and appropriate distribution
channels both for Commodore and Amiga: specialized retail stores, warehouses,
and mail order services. The ESCOM subsidiaries are only one of many
possibilities.
Ladies and gentlemen, we are convinced that ESCOM, Commodore and Amiga will
become a sucess story. Look at the structure and competencies we have built