European Stars and Stripes (Newspaper) - June 23, 1991, Darmstadt, Hesse I 55 i a ? sunday june 23, 1991 the stars and stripes gain Page 17 1 14 new York Chi a rising interest rates and falling second Quarter earnings this past week forced the Market into a Small loss. Hie Market dropped the first four sessions rising Only Friday As traders looked for alternative investments. Poor earnings predictions from ism and other companies sent shudders through the investment com Quimty. _. A a. ,.1 Rading was slow All week and often lacked a rectum. A. A. ,. I lie Dow Jones Industrial average dropped .34.89 to 2965-56, or i percent. Broader Market indexes like the new York Stock Exchange composite Index and Standard amp poor a 500 Index declined. A amp pcs 500-Stock Index fell 4.54 to end the week at 377.7.5, and the new York Stock Exchange composite decreased 2.47 to end the week at 206.87. Declines led advances 1,239-637 among the 2,204 n use issues traded. Weekly big Board volume totalled 978,880,657, compared with 941,607,410, the prior week and with 886,324,680 a year ago. During a news less Day monday the Market moved in a narrow Range falling 6.49, in Light trading. Traders had no news prompting them to buy or sell so the Market Sank from a among the Blue Chip that. Amid conflicting comments from the Federal re. Serve Board on the Economy the Dow on tues due dropped 7.15. T he Market showed concern wednesday about interest rates the Quot triple witching hour Quot and Selling Waves in Europe and Tokyo markets so the Dow fell 31.31.l la fourth largest company started the Day thursday with gloomy news about second Quarter earnings but the Market rebounded to drop Only 1.56 in moderate trading. Still Many analysts were worried that other companies might also have poor second Quarter a Kite surge of buying Friday sparked by the triple witching hour expiration of futures and options boosted the Dow 11.62. Trading was Dull and trend less. A the primary trouble is the Bond marked Quot said Hugh Johnson chief investment officer at first Albany corp. In Albany a yields for the 30-Vear Bond have gone above the magic 8.5 percent level a a Johnson said. / a a. A 1.a at that rate Many investors pause. Why take a risk on the Market when you can get 8.5 percent on a Safe investment a a Johnson asked. On the trading floor Pepsico was again the most Active off is to 30. Pepsico opened a $10 million soft by the new York times Tokyo a when the compact disk emerged from the Laboratory As a consumer product in the. Mid-1980s, recording companies hated it it would confuse Consumers and. Ruin the recording business they said. Today records Are indeed near extinct lion but the recording business has doubled since cd with their scratch free Hiss free digital clarity went on Sale eight years ago. A now the Battle is about to be fought again a this time Over compact disks that record. The Industry is choosing sides Over a new technology called my for mini disk a variant of the compact disk that Sony corp. Is betting will make its own Walkman obsolete. Only Ivi inches in diameter about the size of soda can tops the disk is not Only made for portables but is also a or writable a meaning that data stored on it whether music or digits can be changed. With that innovation the one great add Vantage of tapes Over compact disks is about wiped away. Sony is not saying yet but when production of the player recorders begins next year they Are expected to Cost about $400.for a decade the cd that can record Lias been a holy grail of the electronics Industry and Sony is hardly the Only entrant. Toshiba Philips . Of the Netherlands ism and others have been building prototypes and there Are already some specially systems on the Market As disk drives for computers a taking advantage of the huge storage capacity of what the Industry Calls a optical but Sony is attempting a classic japanese strategy it is quickly forcing new cutting Edge technology into a relatively inexpensive consumer product in Hopes that big manufacturing volume will Cut production costs and leapfrog the company Over the. Rest of the Industry. It is a High risk approach that in the past has had some Broad successes a most recently with Light weight consumer video cameras a and a few crashing failures. And once again the recording Industry except for Sony music and Many of Sony a competitors Are protesting vociferously claiming that what is Good for the March of technology could prove disastrous for the business. The Fate of the my Over the next few years May Well determine More than just the profits of the consumer electronics Industry. Re writable disk technology a a it of which the mini disk is just one variation a has innumerable uses beyond music. The most important May be in computing where optical compact disks know us cd rooms Are already coming into Sony displays its 2>/2-Inch compact disc player acc order at a recent Trade show. Use because they can store far More data than magnetic disks. But unlike mini disks cd rooms cannot record data. A variant of the new mini disk with its Small size would have obvious applications to Laptop computing. For now Sony says its Only immediate interest is the audio Market. A to expand the Market for the compact disk we needed a much smaller disk that could be used outdoors a said Terusaki Aoki who. Heads Sony a tape and disk products division and until recently ran its research and development programs. A and of. Course we needed recording so far Small size and recording capability have been available Only with floppy disks and audio and video tape. These rely on thin layers of particles that Are magnetically read or altered to play or record. In compact disk technology lasers pick up reflected Light from a disks finely pitted surface and these optical signals Are converted into a Stream of digital zeros and ones. The compact disks can store far More information. Now the race Between magnetic and optical technologies is on. The first problem for the optical researchers was to shrink the disks and players to no More than the size of cassette tapes and Walkman. The mini disk that Sony developed can store far less data than a Standard size 5-Inch compact disk which can play about 74 minutes of music. But Sony a new compression technology can Jam As much music into a fifth the space by cutting out frequencies that cannot be detected by the human ear. The Price audio Quality that is a bit lower than on Ordinary compact disks. In the future similar technology May be used to compress the data needed for video images so that video disks a Long a hit product in Japan a will no longer need to be the size of pizza platters. There is the jogging problem while audio tape easily absorbs bouncing and jostling the delicate laser pickups in portable cd players sometimes skip. In my machines special circuitry feeds three seconds of music into a 1 Ilbrink Plant in Warsaw which is troubled by lower second Quarter earnings was the second most Active Down h to 99vs. Columbia Gas which cancelled its dividend and said it might seek bankruptcy Protection was third off 195s to ,17vs. Philips Morris was fourth at 65 off los. Ai it which planned a joint venture to bring its Busi Ness messaging technology. To Hong Kong was fifth most Active at 3s, up is. Compaq computer another High Teslin ology company was also Active Down v to 33ss. Waste Quot management which also expects poor second Quarter earnings was Down 2 at 375s. A on the american Stock Exchange the amex Market value Index Rose 1.03 to close Friday at 365.36, Down 2.03 for the week. Declines led advances 4< s-306 among the 1,004 issues traded for the week. Amex volume totalled 64,126.630, compared with 77,050,990 a week earlier Ami 72,384,930 traded in the same week a year ago. Wang laboratories which reached an arrangement to Market some ism computers was the most Active among amex issues rising a a to 4. The National association of securities dealers Coin polite Index decreased 9.15 to end the week at 485.92. In electronics megabit memory Chip before it is played a meaning that if the music appears garbled the machine has time to recover and read it again. A even if you take the disk out the music plays on for a few seconds a Aoki said. The last trick was to design a Way to record data without gobs of electricity because the my willbe used in Battery operated portables. Some other systems require two lasers a one for erasing data by heating a spot on the disk to 400 degrees one for recording. A Hie Sony sys Tern using a single laser can perform these operations in a single pass Over the a disk. By. A. I a while the technology has been much admired the my itself has not. The biggest critic is Philips Sony a one time ally in cd. Next year around the time that the mini disk appears on the Market Philips is bringing out the digital compact cassette or dec. Like digital audio tape the technology that Sony and other electronics makers Here have tried to promote for years the cassettes have nearly the sound Quality of compact disks. I. But unlike digital audio ape or mini disk machines the new digital cassette players will also play the billions of conventional cassette tapes that have been sold Over the past two decades. Some Are already complaining that. Sony by leaving Consumers dizzy with yet another incompatible technology is risking ruin for the Industry. Alain Levy who Heads Philips recording business poly ram records says Sony a thinks the rest of the world is like Japan a in love with the compact disk and willing to buy the latest technology the percentage of the population that owns cd players in Gadget Happy Japan is far higher than any place else. A we can sell a lot More tapes and a lot More cd without confusing the world with a new format a Levy said. Among his new allies is Sony a archrival Matsushita electric Industrial co. The Winner will be whichever format attracts the most software a whether Hammer and Mozart Drift to the Sony Camp or the Philips one. Sony a record on promoting new formats is spotty at he failure of bet Amax to attract Good programs ultimately Ted to its failure As a videocassette format. That shortcoming started. Sony on its buying spree in recent years starting with lbs records and moving on to Columbia pictures. Yet even with lbs records and All its top Selling titles in hand Sony was make digital audio tape a Success. Last year when digital audio tape sales were expected to Boom Only 150,000 players were sold. A
