CONTENTS

MULTIMEDIA PC TO REMEDY COMPUTER MARKET MALAISE
This summer, the disk drive industry is experiencing a widespread malaise. Demand for storage products from PC manufacturers, the industry’s largest customer, remain lackluster. PC makers are keeping inventories lean in the wake of languid demand from buyers. MORE>

SONY ENTERS THE HOME PC MARKET WITH MULTIMEDIA OFFERING
To punctuate the claim that the multimedia PC is the hot new product area in computers, consumer electronics giant Sony Electronics Inc. of San Jose, Calif. introduced the company’s first PCs, the PCV-70 and PCV-90 personal computers, on June 17, with shipments starting in August. MORE>

KOREANS EMBRACE MULTIMEDIA PC’S
According to the Gallup Organization, the penetration of personal computers into households in Korea exceed the penetration in U.S. households. In a recent survey, the Lincoln, Nebr. market research firm found 35.2% of all Korean households own a PC as compared with 33.9% of all U.S. households.MORE>

DESPITE MULTIMEDIA BRIGHT SPOT, PC BUSINESS OUTLOOK IS GRIM FOR 1996
While there may be pockets of good news in the PC business, the overall outlook is for a down year in 1996. In fact, some analysts are predicting a severe downturn for high technology in general. The signs of debacle are evident in many recent news reports. MORE>

AMD SUFFERS SLACK QUARTER
Joining companies reporting poor performance for the current quarter is Advanced Micro Devices Inc. The Sunnyvale, Calif. semiconductor giant cites sinking unit sales and prices for flash memory as contributing to its shortfall. MORE>

WHAT FEATURES WILL THE MULTIMEDIA PC DEMAND OF ITS CD ROM DRIVE?
One storage product undergoing a major change in the wake of increased multimedia PC demand is the CD ROM drive. As reported in the first pages of Data Storage Report this month, PC companies debuted systems with 8X speed CD ROM drives. Only a year ago, PCs shipped with 4X speed drives. MORE>

DIGITAL VIDEO DISC IS COMING
The DVD Consortium, comprising the world’s leading manufacturers of consumer electronic products, including Hitachi, Matsushita, Mitsubishi, Philips Electronics N.V., Pioneer, Sony, Thomson Multimedia, Time Warner, Toshiba, and JVC, is driving the digital videodisc. MORE>

WHY INTERACTIVE GAMES ARE DRIVING MULTIMEDIA PC DEVELOPMENT
According to the newly released 1996 SIMBA Game Player Survey conducted by the popular Internet site Happy Puppy Games, SIMBA Information and The Greenfield Consulting Group, nearly 86% of respondents polled had upgraded their system ’s hardware solely to improve game playing. MORE>

DEVELOPERS SELL GAMES BY GIVING THEM AWAY
The 1996 SIMBA Game Player Survey conducted by the popular Internet site Happy Puppy Games, SIMBA Information and The Greenfield Consulting Group found that giving away games over the Internet is the way to sell the product. MORE>

DIGITAL VERSATILE DISK: IS IT READY FOR THE MASS MARKET?
The long awaited digital versatile disk will be delayed yet again. The culprit is concern by content suppliers over copy protection of their intellectual property. What content suppliers are worried about is that the DVD with its MPEG-2 encoded video; promises far better quality than available on a videocassette. MORE>

IC MAKER INTRODUCES DVD CARD REFERENCE DESIGN
Last month, Zoran Corp. a Santa Clara, Calif. supplier of integrated circuits and software for digital video and audio compression applications, introduced a reference design card for implementing DVD capabilities in multimedia PCs. IC suppliers build reference designs so system manufacturers can quickly incorporate new ICs into end-user products. MORE>

PC’S WAITING ON DVD, TOO
Consumer electronics buyers are not the only ones anxious for their first chance to buy a digital videodisc player. PC buyers are also eager to add this much higher capacity mass storage device to their PCs to watch movies and to play even more complex interactive games. MORE>

THE STUMBLING BLOCK PREVENTING WIDESPREAD DEPLOYMENT OF DVD
The drive to establish the digital versatile disk product is intense because of the market potential involved. According to Philips Electronics NV of Eindhoven, There are 600 million CD audio and CD ROM drives installed worldwide. MORE>

DVD FOR PC, TV, OR BOTH
With the convergence of television, communications, computers, the line between entertainment and work has blurred. Increasingly, PCs are being used for games and television is being used to surf the Internet for information. MORE>

NETWORK COMPUTER ON THE VERGE OF WIDESPREAD DEPLOYMENT
The hyperbole surrounding the “network computer” is second only to that surrounding the Windows 95 announcement last year. In light of the recent bloodbath in high technology stocks, the arrival of a new product promising to generate large volume of sales is most welcome, especially a product intended for the 63% of households without a PC. MORE>

EMERSON RADIO TO DISTRIBUTE NETWORK TV
In June, Visual Information Service Corp. of Chicago, Ill. granted Emerson Radio Corp. of Parsippany, N. J. the North and South American exclusive distribution rights to VIScorp’s interactive Internet television set-top device, the Universal Internet-Television Interface, and the UITI-TV interactive “smart” TV set. MORE>

MICROSOFT MOVES AGGRESSIVELY INTO INTERNET SHOPPING
A study last year by VeriFone Inc. of Redwood City, Calif. and MasterCard International of New York City and Visa International of San Francisco, Calif. concludes that electronic commerce over the Internet is on the verge of widespread acceptance. MORE>

MONEY AND CONCERNS FOUND IN INTERNET COMMERCE
Last year, Global Concepts, Inc., an Atlanta-based research and consulting company carried out a study for Verifone, Visa, and MasterCard. It sought to assess merchant and consumer attitudes toward commerce over the Internet. MORE>

SURVEY SHOWS INCREASE INTERNET USE COSTS ON-LINE SERVICES
Survey results released this month by Computer Intelligence (CI) of La Jolla, Calif. shows the rapid growth of Internet and intranet use led to a decrease in the usage of on-line services in the workplace. The 1996 Computer Intelligence (CI) Consumer Technology Index (CTI) study, a large, comprehensive survey of personal computer use in the United States found 10 million PC users became regular users of the Internet last year, a whopping 115% increase. MORE>

WEB VISITORS VIEW 5.7 PAGES AT AD-SUPPORTED SITES
I/PRO (Internet Profiles Corporation) of San Francisco, Calif. announced today the release of a first-ever syndicated research report that analyzes the behavior of millions of visits at 75 ad-supported sites. MORE>

COMPETITION IN FLASH MEMORY CARD MARKET BEGINS TO INTENSIFY
In June and July, a number of flash memory card announcements pointed to renewed competition in this arena. The flash card market is a subset of the larger flash chip market in that end products are packaged cards intended to plug into a computer-based system. MORE>

M-SYSTEMS-SAMSUNG FLASH DEAL
M-Systems Flash Disk Pioneers Ltd, and Samsung Semiconductor Inc. have signed an agreement M-Systems will develop a linear controller for Samsung ’s NAND flash memory components. MORE>

M-SYSTEMS DISKONCHIP RECEIVES U.S. PATENT
M-Systems Flash Disk Pioneers Ltd. of Tel Aviv, Israel has received a patent from the U.S. Patent Office for its DiskOnChip product. The DiskOnChip is a miniature electronic disk that combines flash disk functionality with an embedded BIOS (Basic Input / Output System) in one standard package chip. BIOS is contained in a memory component found in each PC. MORE>

MINIATURE FLASH CARD STANDARDS BATTLE FOR MARKET ACCEPTANCE
As of June 25, there were three ad hoc group all claiming to have the right solution for the miniature flash card. Two established contenders are the CompactFlash Association in Palo Alto, Calif. and the Miniature Card Implementer’s Forum (MCIF) of Folsom, Calif. MORE>

INTEL DEBUTS ITS MINIATURE FLASH CARD PRODUCT LINE
This month, Intel Corp. of Folsom, Calif. introduced its flash memory-based miniature card product line, the Series 100 Flash Memory Miniature Cards. The cards are available in 2- and 4-Mbyte densities. OEM prices in 10,000 quantity are $39 for 2-Mbyte and $69 for 4-Mbyte cards. MORE>

JAPAN AND KOREAN MEMORY MAKERS PROMOTE NEW NAND FLASH CARD
The battle to be the next standard miniature flash memory card took yet another turn early last month. The miniature flash memory card market had been contested by Sandisk Corp. of Sunnyvale, Calif. and Intel Corp. of Folsom, Calif. In early June, Seoul, Korea DRAM memory giant Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. and Tokyo-based Toshiba Corp. joined the battle with a solution of their own. MORE>

FUJI PHOTO FIRST WITH CAMERA USING SSFDC FLASH CARD
Fuji Photo Film Co., Ltd., a board member of the SSFDC Forum in Tokyo, Japan, has completed the development of a digital camera incorporating the Solid State Floppy Disk Card (SSFDC) small form factor memory device (which is known as SmartMedia in Japan). MORE>

TOKYO ELECTRON SHIPPING SSFDC CARD CONTROLLER CHIP
Tokyo Electron Limited (TEL) has begun shipping large quantities of their F1PACK superlite small flash disk controller chip set, which supports the SSFDC (Solid State Floppy Disk Card) physical media format, for the U.S. and Canadian markets. MORE>

HEWLETT-PACKARD SHUTS DOWN ITS DISK DRIVE MAKING OPERATION
The Hewlett-Packard Company of Palo Alto, Calif. announced on July 10 that it was closing down its disk drive operation in Boise, Idaho at a cost of $150 million. The company will focus instead on the extended-storage market, including tape drives, libraries and CD-recordable technologies. MORE>

IBM AND STORAGETEK MAKE A DEAL
In June, IBM announced an OEM agreement with Storage Technology Corp. As a result, IBM would resell the Iceberg, Kodiak and Arctic Fox storage systems made by StorageTek and help fund the latter’s research. MORE>

QUANTUM DEBUTS NEW HIGH CAPACITY ADDITIONS TO FIREBALL LINE
Much like the rest of the disk drive industry Quantum Corp. of Milpitas, Calif. has several months of hard times. One of its largest OEM customers Apple Computer Inc. of Cupertino, Calif. has suffered in the market and has not been buying as many drives as in the past. Its Bigfoot hard drive offering had not had the success expected. MORE>

WHAT IS SSA?
SSA is a high speed serial interface for storage peripherals. It is a single port capable of carrying on two 20-Mbyte per second conversations at once —one inbound and one outbound. MORE>

SERIAL STORAGE ARCHITECTURE EMERGES
More than a dozen companies showed the latest in Serial Storage Architecture (SSA) products at Dataquest Storage Track ’96 in Monterey, Calif. June 26 and 27. The products, all of which are now available, represent a major thrust toward meeting an increasing demand throughout the first half of the year. MORE>

IBM REFERENCE DESIGN COULD HELP SPAWN A MACINTOSH CLONE INDUSTRY
With Apple Computer Inc. of Cupertino, Calif. licensing the Mac OS to clone makers, PowerPC-based Apple OS systems could challenge the Wintel dominance of Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft Corp. and Santa Clara, Calif.-based Intel Corp. MORE>

1ST 2.5-GBYTE QIC CARTRIDGE TAPE DRIVE BOWS
This month, Tecmar Technologies Inc. in Longmont, Colo. unveiled the industry’s first universal QIC tape drive, offering 2.5 Gbyte of storage compatibility with all major DC6000-class data cartridge drive formats in use today. MORE>

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