CompuServe Thread

I have just returned from a luncheon presented by Commodore International at the Waldorf-Astoria in NYC. Present were Irving Gould, CEO of Commodore International, Max Toy, VP of US operations, Dr. Henry Rubin – Head of Development, and other members of Commodore International upper management. Although the primary reason for the meeting was to spread good news about CBM financials (earnings up from .16 cents/share last year to .30 cents/share this year), also discussed were plans for the future of the company and the C64, MS-DOS and (most significantly to us) the Amiga lines. Before I go further, my thanks to Ron Troy, Don Curtis, Tony Muscarella and Jay Gross for their opinions on questions to be asked of Gould, Toy, et. al. CBM is planning to increase US business market penetration, particularly through the Amiga and Messy-DOS lines. They are releasing the PC 40-III, a '386 PC compatible that they claim has better performance characteristics than most other '386 PCs out there now. Pricing will be competitive, they claim. In the Amiga line, the 2000HD and the 2500 will be released as well. The 2000HD having an integrated hard disk system, permitting both Amiga and MS-DOS sides to autoboot from HD. The 2500 having a 68020 coprocessor board, 3 Mb RAM standard an MMU chipset and Unix or a bridge card. On display were the full line of CBM products, from a C64 and a 128D to an Amiga 500, a 2000HD and a 2500 with an AT bridge running 1-2-3. I asked Dr. Rubin about the delays in the release of the AT bridge. He said that they are still beta testing new capabilities that they did not originally predict that they could have from the bridge — most significant was MS Mouse compatibility without a separate mouse and mouse card. When the pointer moves into a DOS window running, for example, AutoCAD and the mouse clicks in the window, it immediately (if required) adopts all the characteristics of the MS Mouse, including the shape of the pointer. He gave me no date for its release, other than RRSN. As to marketing, CBM has modified their marketing in several ways. First, they are actively trying to improve their dealer channels, which they burned several years ago when they mass-marketed the C64 through Toys-R-Us and KMart. Max Toy's relationships dating from his IBM and Compaq days are apparently helping a great deal. Further, Toy has restructured his sales and marketing force into 4 regions with more and better people who will give him (he claims) better results. Finally, in advertising, they have been trying to (as Apple did with the MUCK – I mean MAC) get into the business market with the Amiga in the 'back door' through desktop presentation capabilities. To this end they have been advertising heavily in Music, Video and advertising journals, to excellent effect, claiming up to 1000 calls per day in response to a recent campaign. Significantly, they will NOT be pushing the 2000 on national TV, nor the 500 (except for Christmas). They plan on advertising most heavily on VH1 and MTV!! They are clearly targeting their advertising, with a close eye on their bottom-line. I asked Mr. Gould about the possibility of getting Ashton-Tates and Lotus Development Corp.'s attention to "validate" the Amiga to the business community. He felt that they are paying attention, and theat when the installed base (currently at 700,000) exceeds 1 million, that attention will suddenly turn this way (I have my own doubts about this one), and went on to say that he felt that whether this happens or not, the Amiga software out there beats heck in performance and capabilities out of their messy-dos competitors. (This last I agree with wholeheartedly, but who doesn't!) I asked Dr. Rubin about the possibility of an Amiga Laptop (!) He hedged a bit, saying that he does not want to predict something that will depend to a large degree on market research and other factors beyond their control, but that, yesGPey are working on lower-power-drain CMOS chip sets for the Amiga, so (and this is my interpretation) perhaps in two to three years (maybe) we might see one. I then asked Dr. Rubin about the 3000, and he was similarly reluctant to reveal much, although he scoffed at the idea of ever even considering using an '020, for several reasons, not the least of which is the marketing edge that an '030 provides (it's NOT _just_ an '020!). He also intimated that no new Amiga models will ever be released without an integrated hard disk system. He agreed with my assessment that the 1000 was a great first step, but that they have learned a great deal from it and the mistakes in that box, and would NOT repeat any of them. Finally, I asked Mr. Toy about software writer relationships. He conceded that in the past they haven't been great, but that they were working to improve this. He did not give any solid examples, other than the developer's conferences held earlier this year, and particularly missed a chance to illustrate better cooperation with authors. He felt that by improving support at the dealer level, authors would benefit because dealers would be better educated about their products. Concern, but no concrete plan as far sa I could see. SUMMARY: UPSIDE-Better dealer relations, Targeted advertising, dedication to high technology. DOWNSIDE-no real devotion to developers ('they'll do it on their own – my paraphrase) and no real attempt to get major developers such as AT or LDC involved. The real dedication to the machine continues to be on a hardware basis, and now they have added a strategy of heavy targeted marketing on a "back door" basis to try to get into the business world. It's ambitious, but still somewhat short-sighted. Then again, some of this may still derive from Toy's IBM background, where they put together the boxes in a vertically integrated company, and marketed it, letting the software take care of itself. Same thing at Compaq, so maybe that's what Toy is playing with (pun intended). ok, let the floodgates of opinion flow!!! –Gabe