CompuServe Messages

The following was presented at the recent UK Press Conference/Meeting! Amiga Technologies Speech by John Smith *(UK Sales Manager for Amiga Technologies)* August 16/17 1995 I Would like to add my welcome to everyone here today which of course is the first public conference in the UK. For those of you who possibly do not know me I am John Smith and I have been appointed the UK Sales Manager for Amiga Technologies UK. I was previously with Commodore for 7 years, the last 2_ years of them as National Sales Manager. You will observe from the Agenda that I will explain briefly about the product we will be selling and through which channels we will be selling them. I am obviously biased towards the Amiga – very happy to be selling it again, and look forward to its re-emergence and it gaining the recognition it richly deserves. However, I am fortunate in being able to sell other products along side the Amiga that come from both inside and outside the Commodore branding. The first of these, which is outside the Commodore brand, is Virtual Reality product in the form of I-Glasses. There will be two versions available. The first we can term the video version. This type will work with anything that has a composite video output – so it will obviously work with Amiga but also Sega Saturn, Sony Playstation – your VHS video player etc. They act as a personal display screen and display the image equivalent to that of an 80" screen in which you can be totally immersed. In fact your very own cinema! You can see your games in 2D or 3D with games that have support for I Glasses . Films like Tommy from the WHO are currently being produced especially in this 3D format. The second version, the PC version has the additional head tracking system with it and will therefore display not only in 3D but will allow you to immerse yourself in your own virtual world. It also gives surround sound and these glasses weigh from only 8oz in total. Very light and have been ergonomically designed with members from the university of Edinburgh to help avoid eye strain etc. They are the only glasses we know of in fact that are designed with spectacle wearers in mind. The pack will come complete with games and be available during September . We have Denis Premiski of Virtual Products with us today who will explain more about the product and prospective market for I Glasses shortly. Under the Commodore Brand we will have available MS DOS PCs. There will be an initial special limited offering of a Pentium 60 mini tower multimedia at a very competitive price. It will come complete with Hard Drive, CD ROM, 8 megabytes of memory and software. We will then launch the Commodore Golf series. "GOLF" is a name that is understood throughout Europe so we feel is a very acceptable name. Our minimum entry level will be the Pentium 75 and again will be a full multimedia product including a quad CD ROM drive, sound card etc. There will also be a Pentium 100 version. This product has been designed exclusively for Commodore by Frog design and will be of top quality and build. It will be supported with 12 months on site warranty. There will also be a full compliment of Commodore branded peripherals like quad speed CD drives – loud speakers -mice etc. all colourfully packed and competitively priced. Back to Amigas I will have available an excellent Amiga 1200 pack with software for the end of September as the entry level machine and also a higher but very competitively priced 170MB hard disk drive pack. It will include productivity software like Database -Spreadsheet- Word processing package- Paint package and games. We will of course box it in our usual eye catching manner . There will be the Amiga 4000/040 pack with a 1 Gigabyte hard drive and 6 megabytes of memory and later, during November a 4000/060 pack. Top quality software again will be included. All Amigas will have the latest version of the operating system,version 3.1, which has been optimised to improve system performance. I will also have a new Amiga multisync monitor that vertically scans from 15 to 38 Khz which will avail itself to all Amigas from A500 upwards that have a RGB port.. Where will I sell them? These products have various routes to market not least being through the independent via the distributor. Whilst we still have to dot Is and cross the Ts we will have 2 distributors this side of Christmas. Negotiations are almost complete. Looking to 1996 I propose one or possibly even up to two more distributors around the main Christmas period. These distributors obviously will support the full range of our products and be cognisant of the Independents requirements. A higher percentage of the product available this Christmas will go through the Independent channel. As again we maintain support for the loyalty they have shown throughout the ten years of Amiga. It is my responsibility to sell our products here in the UK and also in Australia, India, Malta and Israel. High Street The High street is of course also important to aiding our success and once again we are very close to finalising contracts but expect to see our product there through people like Comet and Tandy. The high street has changed somewhat since Amigas were last freely available because we do not have Rumbelows anymore and have seen them replaced by Escom stores who specialise in PC's and communication products. It is envisaged that they will sell our Amiga brand. VAR Value added resellers who specialise in the Audio visual arena and who give us access to TV production companies and other niche markets are obviously important for the Amiga 4000 product. We will look to top companies like Premier Vision, Scala, Pentre Technologies etc. to fulfil this sector of the market. Corporates The corporate sector is an area that will be looked at with regards to MS DOS product. Personally, I only had a small contact with the PC arena during my time at Commodore and I am of course aware of how quickly this changes especially as Commodore has not sold PC's for over 3 years. This market will be addressed and we will probably look towards some kind of joint support with the VAR,S to take this sector in hand. We have already sold the majority of our production, it is now a question of allocation and that transfers the pressure back to Petro. Please ensure we get all our product and importantly when we want it. To summarise – Amiga is back, along with other new exciting products available from the end of September. We look forward to the Xmas period and believe that between all of us we can make it a pleasurable and profitable market once again. On behalf of Amiga Technologies UK, Thank you for your attention! JOHN SMITH AMIGA TECHNOLOGIES UK