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Technology Stocks : C-Cube -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Manuel Vizcaya who wrote (50635)	2/7/2001 12:47:41 AM
From: Maya	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 50808

News Corp. rises on DirecTV report By Vivian Chu, CBS.MarketWatch.com Last Update: 12:17 AM ET Feb 7, 2001 SYDNEY (CBS.MW) - Shares of media and entertainment giant News Corp. rose sharply Wednesday after the company reportedly agreed on merger terms with U.S. satellite TV company DirecTV. By early afternoon, News Corp. (NWS: news, msgs) shares rose 3.6 percent to 17.30 Australian dollars, after gaining as much as 4.5 percent earlier. News Corp. and General Motors (GM: news, msgs) , whose Hughes Electronics unit owns DirecTV, have broadly agreed on a framework to combine the companies into a global satellite broadcast business valued between 60 to 70 billion dollars, the Wall Street Journal reported in its Wednesday online edition. An agreement would likely see Sky Global Networks - which comprises News Corp's global satellite assets - merge with Hughes Electronics, which would be spun off from GM. Ultimately, Hughes would own 64 percent of the new entity, while News Corp. would own the rest. Microsoft Corp. (MSFT: news, msgs) may also take a stake in the new company, while News Corp. would take day-to-day management control. A deal may be reached within weeks, it added. News Corp. could not be immediately reached for comment. Rupert Murdoch, head of News Corp., reportedly wants DirecTV, the U.S.'s biggest satellite television broadcaster, to give a U.S. presence to Sky Global Networks. A merger between DirecTV and Sky Global would mean that a previously planned offering of Sky Global would not be necessary. Market volatility has forced News Corp. to push back the IPO date several times since last year. News Corp. is due to post its fourth-quarter 2000 earnings Thursday. www2.marketwatch.com

To: Manuel Vizcaya who wrote (50635)	2/18/2001 11:32:40 AM
From: John Rieman	Respond to of 50808

I don't completely agree with Redherring. In 1995/96 when VCD was being established in China, Oak Tech and Windbond both introed MPEG-1 decoders. Both failed to penetrate the market. C-Cube's mistake was not pimping Sony/Phillips/Matsushita/Toshiba, it was not pursuing Chinese OEMs more aggressively. When ESST's chip started shipping, they shipped to Chinese OEMs who had been making Audio CD players. ESST got almost a 50% market share overnight. If Cube had been pushing its decoder chips, and lowering the price, ESST would not have penetrated as deeply. A second point is that China does not allow new technology to be introduced, unless local businesses benefit. There were large tariffs placed on completed players being shipped to China, and almost no tariffs placed on the components. If C-Cube didn't sell its chip to the Chinese, somebody else would have. Supporting just Sony et al, was not an option. However, the market was handled poorly. In 1997, C-Cube had to lower prices by over 60%, just to regain control.