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- u f AM-CommodoreFolds 04-29 0340
- ^AM-Commodore Folds,0332<
- ^Commodore Scuttles Ship<
- WEST CHESTER, Pa. (AP) _ Commodore International Ltd., a pioneer
- in the personal computer industry, said late Friday it is going out
- of business.
- The company plans to transfer its assets to unidentified
- trustees ``for the benefit of its creditors'' and has placed its
- major subsidiary, Commodore Electronics Ltd., into voluntary
- liquidation.
- ``This is the initial phase of an orderly voluntary liquidation
- of both companies,'' Commodore said in a brief statement.
- Company executives could not immediately be reached Friday
- evening.
- The company last month reported an $8.2 million loss for the
- quarter ending Dec. 31 on sales of $70.1 million. A year earlier,
- Commodore lost $77.2 million on sales of $237.7 million in the same
- period.
- In the latest report, Commodore said financial limits had
- thwarted its ability to supply products, leading to weakened sales.
- One of its new products, the Amiga CD32 video game, had sold poorly
- in Europe, where the company did most of its business.
- The company's net worth turned negative in the fiscal year ended
- last June 30.
- Its stock, which had traded at around $3 per share before the
- quarterly results were announced last month, closed unchanged at
- 87{ cents per share on the New York Stock Exchange Friday.
- Commodore started 40 years ago as a typewriter repair company in
- the Bronx. Its extension to the adding machine business paved the
- way for it to make calculators and then personal computers by the
- mid-1970s.
- Commodore competed with Radio Shack for the first computers sold
- to homes and co-founder Jack Tramiel became a highly-regarded
- figure in the fledgling PC industry.
- By the early 1980s, it was overshadowed in the PC business by
- Apple Computer Inc. and International Business Machines Corp.
- Software manufacturers didn't create as much software for
- Commodore's Amiga line as it did for Apple and IBM-compatible
- machines.
- In recent years, most of Commodore's business was in Europe.
-
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