The following is the verbatim text of a news report from the Thurs.,
May 4, 1995 edition of the Wall Street Journal:

Headline:  Commodore PCs Brought Back to Life by German Company

Subhead:  Escom Plans to Revive Amiga and Other Models
          Cheers Fanatical Group of Users

NEW YORK - The pioneering company of Commodore Electronics Ltd., whose
production was halted last year after the company's long, sorry
decline, came back from the dead with the help of a German computer
retailer.

Escom AG, which operates about 1,500 computer stores in Europe, paid
$10 million for the rights to the Commodore name, its patents and
intellectual property in a bankruptcy-court auction.  Escom yesterday
said it plans to resume production of Commodore personal computers,
including its famed Amiga model, in China and to distribute them
world-wide.

The news cheered longtime Commodore users, a small but fanatically 
loyal group who had watched in dismay as the sale of Commodore's assets
dragged out for a year.

"I'm glad it's finally over," said Jason Compton, a Northwestern
University student who publishes the Amiga Report on the Internet.
But he said he worries about Escom's long-term commitment to the Amiga,
a proprietary computer that is neither fish nor fowl in a PC market
divided between computers adhering to the International Business
Machines Corp. standard and those that operate on Apple Computer Inc.'s
Macintosh software.

Escom, Mr. Compton says, may find it too expensive to develop a much-
needed follow-on model to the current Amiga, a design first introduced
in 1985, and may quietly let the model die while continuing to use the
Commodore name on IBM-standard PCs, which it currently sells under the
Escom name.

But Escom said it has big plans for the Amiga.  In addition to resuming
production of the entire product line, it says it will integrate Amiga
technology into the MS-DOS software format, used by 80% of the world's
PCs.  It also plans to develop TV set-top control boxes, used for
interactive TV, based on the Amiga design.

Commodore derived about 80% of its sales in Europe, said Petro
Tyschtschenko, Escom's general manager of production.  A particularly
attractive market for the retailer may be "the kids who bought them
when they were 10 or 12 years old" and now are looking for a new model,
said Mr. Tyschtschenko, who worked for Commodore until recently.

Commodore sold about five million Amigas, which incorporated such
multimedia features as color video and stereo sound years before most
other PCs.  The auction, overseen by the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in
New York, attracted a last-minute, $15 million bid from Dell Computer
Corp., which didn't plan to restart production but was interested in
Commodore's patents.  But Dell attached certain conditions to its bid,
which tipped the scales in favor of Escom, according to lawyers for the
German concern and the court-appointed liquidators.

Escom said it has signed a pact for a joint venture with Tianjin
Family-Issued Multimedia Co. in China to make the Commodore line.
Escom has no plans to use any of the former production facilities or
offices of Commodore, which was based in West Chester, Pa.

10 responses total.

I heard a rumor that they were going to re-introduce the C-64 in some
smaller, 3rd-world countries.  Any idea if this is true?

I hadn't heard that one ... where did you hear about it?  Unless the
source is pretty reliable, I'm inclined to think it might be wishful
hoping on someone's part.  The C-64 was the most popular computer in
it's time (I understand it still tops the charts for number of units
sold of any one model to this day) but it's pre-amiga technology.
The VW bug was, in its time, the most popular car ever made.  That
doesn't mean that Volkwagon is going to re-introduce it, or that there
would be much market for it if they did.  

(just my 2 cents, of course.)

Well, the guy runs a video production place where i live..he reads all the
Amiga mags..but i don't know..just what he said.

Would you see if you can find out, Matt?  I'm curious now!

Meanwhile, what's the latest on the availability of the Amiga?  Has anyone
heard when or whether parts and new machines will be availble again?

As far as the re-issue of the C-64, that is true (by the way VW is going to be
producing an updated version of the bug based on their 1994 concept 1
prototype, or so I heard).  Escom is planning to sell C-64s in China.  I think
their nuts, but apperently they believe there is a market.  (They are also
restarting  production of the A600 though, and some have speculated that this
is in case the C-64 doesn't go over well, or gets pirated.  Nobody can figure
out who but the chineese who have nothing, would buy the shitty 600.

The following was gleened from an interview with Manfred Schmitt,
founder and majority shareholder of ESCOM AG of Germany, conducted
on May 19, which was published in the June issue of Amazing Computing.

Schmitt said, The C64 is a product which we want to produce for the
Russian market and the Eastern market, India and other places with a low
income, where people want a low cost machine to start in the computer
field."  He also stated quite frankly that one of the motivating factors
in Escom's purchase of Commodore was so that they could market their own
line of PCs under the Commodore name.

He went on to say, "The Amiga is our heart, it is what we like, here is
a potential technology which in our point of view was greatly under-
estimated.  So we will invest and we will do a lot to make new Amiga
technology for the future."  Towards this end, Escom has formed
Amiga Technologies GmbH.  There will be 40-50 people working on the
Amiga and nothing else.  Schmitt said, "We are looking at our production
of the A4000 for this year to be around 25,000, about 150,000 A1200s and
50-60,000 CD32s by the end of the year beginning by September-October
time frame."

On the future of the Amiga:  "My intention is to get all the best people
for the Commodore Amiga back as we do have a very exciting future and
I am convinced that this technology will go forward.  We have to get
to the next generation of technology.  The quantum leap is to the
64 bit technology and the RISC technology so we need this team as
otherwise we will have no future.  Once I have these people in place
I have a time frame of 2 or 3 years where we can maybe survive with
existing technology but we must within a 15 month time frame bring
new technology to the market."

Hello, it is strange that Amiga was bought by commodore, I went down.
Commodore was bought by Amiga, but it sank too. Viscorp plan to buy 
Amiga, but it back down. Now Gateway buy Amiga, but face legal problems 
with Rightiming. Any other idea abour problems in the future?
Should they joint/sell share to MS like APPLE? Regards (AW)

I think a joint venture with Microsoft would be a disaster.  Amiga has a 
great deal to offer in the right market and that isn't the same market 
as the one Microsoft is aiming for.  

I think Gateway will eventually work it out.

I have a broken down c-128 . Any idea if I can get it fixed ?

Response not possible - You must register and login before posting.

- Backtalk version 1.3.30 - Copyright 1996-2006, Jan Wolter and Steve Weiss