PACE MICRO SYSTEMS THREAD

My guess is that the SKY+ promotion has surpassed even SKY's expectations of it, and that with Amstrad having failed to come up with anything for Christmas (as was expected) then PIC must have been asked to seriously increase Production.

I still wouldn't be surprised if the AMSTRAD SKY+ box never actually appears. At the time Sugar agreed the order, he was reported to be frantically buying PIC shares with several rumours circulating that he would bid for the company. If he thought at the time he was likely to get PIC, then putting a SKY+ box out with an Amstrad Label on it would have been easy.

But PIC have put several years development into getting the SKY+ box to the level it is now at. I don't see how AMT could achieve the same thing in 9 months - even if they had managed to poach some of PIC's staff. I would expect a large part of the technology will be heavily patent protected.

I still think Sugar needs PIC to do it, but I don't think that's now likely to happen.

The end result is that PIC retains a massive Worldwide lead in PVR technology because their product is out and working brilliantly in increasingly large numbers. This should give PIC a very large advantage in gaining similar deals in other parts of the World.

Tony