Martin Banks, Personal Computer World 11/89 - checked

November 1989

Though it is trying desperately to pretend that it isn't, IBM is just one of many companies now being obliged to take Unix seriously. When even a games player like Atari decides to introduce Unix machines, you know that this is no longer an esoteric argument amongst minicomputer manufacturers.

Unix, in short, has the potential to be relevant to just about everybody.

It is hardly surprising, of course. Hardware technology is moving on so fast now that a typical desktop system with the prime role of playing games has a super-fast 32-bit processor and a couple of megabytes of memory. Given the comprehensive video quality used in some of the games the ST runs, such power is essential, nay, minimal to the application.

Now the company has ambled into the 'personal' Unix workstation business. The move was first announced well over a year ago, so it has not rushed at the business. But then again, the market is developing slowly at the moment. The fact that Atari is launching the machine in West Germany first and does not expect to sell more than a few hundred in the UK next year shows that it still has doubts about quite what it is doing.

What interests me about the arrival of the Atari boxes however, is not the machines themselves. It is more what they could have represented for the UK and European manufacturers of PCs (few in number that they are).

The point was brought home to me when I saw an item of news about the European Commission's plans for the European semiconductor marketplace. There may seem to be little connection between this and Unix workstations, but I hope to show there is.

The EC plans to introduce a 'floor-price' on a number of semiconductor devices imported into Europe from Japan and the Far East. The nasty Orientals have, of course, been accused of 'dumping' their products over here (as they were accused in the US) and damaging the prospects of the indigenous manufacturers. The main manufacturers in question are Siemens, SGS-Thomson (which now owns Inmos and the Transputer) and GEC.

The products in question are memory devices, and in particular dynamic memories - products the Japanese have shown themselves to be the best in the world at making. They are, it has to be said, products that the US and European manufacturers have tended to not to bother with over recent years. They, instead, have concentrated their efforts on making processors and other things with higher profit margins. It was only when the foreigners used their memory making expertise to also make better/faster/cheaper processors etc that every one started to squeal.

Funny this, for I always thought the spoils of competition in business went to the company which shafted all the others, regardless of race, colour creed or sexual persuasion. Unfortunately, of course, this is not the case. 'Competition' means that 'I' (meaning nice American or European companies) win the dominant market share, not 'you' (meaning nasty foreigners we suspect of being better at making things than us).

So, we protect our indigenous industries from the ravages of the enemy. In certain areas it is understandable, indeed desirable - but such areas need to be picked with care. I am not sure that dynamic RAMs is one of them. The stupendous capital investment needed to make these devices means that the manufacturers have to sell a lot, and quickly, to get anything like a profit. No one in that business could afford to 'blackmail' customer industries in other countries for very long - they'd go bust themselves.

And that brings me, by a circuitous route, to my point about Unix workstations. The semiconductor business may not be the right one to protect, but the domestic manufacture of PCs might well have been. (Needless to say, this is the one that has, historically been the most open and victimised by legislation).

It is no coincidence, for example, that the majority of 'European' PC manufacturers now squealing about the activities of the European Commission are threatening to move their manufacturing - or more commonly, assembly operations - to other parts of the world. This is OK for them, because they are already from other parts of the world. Most PCs made here are not of here, if you see what I mean.

And we are now reaching a point in time when the world marketplace for Unix-based systems and workstations is coming together with the technological background and experience of Europe. Unix implementation skills are far higher here than in the US; we know much more about getting the best from such systems.

If Europe had a PC manufacturing base of sufficient critical mass it could now be in a position to attack the very core of the world market for workstations of all varieties and sizes. I accept that European parochialism would have always been a serious stumbling block in any European company developing sufficient vision to achieve this, but any possibility is totally lost with the protective ambitions currently being displayed by the EC.

By setting floor levels on the prices of semiconductor memories to protect a European industry which, by and large, doesn't make memories has one obvious tactical effect, especially in a market where the whole world is the average memory user's back garden. PC manufacturers, as we have seen over recent years, will produce their hardware where the component prices are lowest. That, increasingly, means the Far East.

PC buyers, you and me, don't know and don't care where the things are made so long as they work well. All the evidence is that, apart from the occasional bad example, Far East PCs work just as well as Far West ones; and they are, surprise surprise, usually a good bit cheaper. The same will be so in Unix workstations. The Japanese are threatening Unix boxes at the equivalent of £1700; Atari's opening price in Germany is £1900. European-manufacturers, buying components here, will be hard-pressed to match that.

And perhaps saddest of all is the most obvious of facts: if the likes of Atari think there is a market for Unix workstations beyond the smooth suits of the mega-corporate users, then a big opportunity for European manufacturing success must surely have now been lost.

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