Unisys to resell Hewlett PCs, quit making its own
Reuters Story - March 25, 1998 12:28
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BLUE BELL, Pa., March 25 (Reuters) - Unisys Corp.
said Wednesday it had agreed to a deal for Hewlett-Packard Co.
to supply Unisys with personal computers and
entry-level servers for resale as part of a plan by Unisys to
quit producing PCs and concentrate on high-end servers.
No financial terms were disclosed.
Unisys had previously announced in January that it was
seeking a partner to which it could outsource production of PCs
and low-end servers. Unisys took a charge of about $127 million
for its PC operations as part of a broader set of $1.1 billion
in restructuring charges in its fourth quarter 1997 results.
Under the terms of the deal, which remains tenative, Unisys
plans to sell under its brand name built-to-order notebook,
desktop and Intel-based entry-level server computers from
Hewlett-Packard, Unisys spokesman J. Peter Hynes said.
The spokesman said that with the outsourcing and resale
deal with Hewlett-Packard, Unisys hopes to retain a large
percentage of the approximately $500 million in revenues it
reported from PC sales in 1997.
Unisys, once a major manufacturer of personal computers for
the corporate market, had seen its share of the market decline
in recent years amid cut-throat industry price competition. By
halting production of personal computers of its own, Unisys can
concentrate on its more lucrative corporate computer and
services businesses, it said. |
