European Stars and Stripes (Newspaper) - August 9, 1994, Darmstadt, Hesse                                Page 10 the stars and stripes computers tuesday August 9,1994upstarts offer a Chall Ngethe a Little brands grab a bigger share of High tech Market by John Burgess n Washington Post Washington con Iraq Apple Dell and in my but what about Eroles or computer International or Leeco the Little brands. They rarely make the news. Some people Are scared to buy them. But Market research firm Dat quest inc. Estimates that last year they accounted for about 35 percent of a $74 billion world Market for personal computers. There Are great flocks of these companies a just Check the ads in financial pages and the backs of computer magazines a because its an easy business to enter. You and i could set up shop tomorrow. We  need much Money or for that matter much expertise. I once visited International business machine  main pc factory in research Triangle Park . Not much rocket science even there. A High end ps-2 took just a few minutes to build All by hand. This was strictly a cottage Industry. A worker would grab a Case fit in a Basic circuit Board some memory chips a couple of disk drives a Power Supply a few other components and connect them All together with cables. When the top was popped on the world had another computer. I got a real feel for what the Market analysts mean when they say computers had become a commodities. Just like soybean meal is soybean meal no matter who produces it most any company a computers Are pretty much the same. Some techies will quibble with that. And to a degree they re right. Some. Components Are better than others. But the tact is that its getting More and More like Coke and Pepsi. They All essentially have Access to the same ingredients. Building the components themselves is where the real Challenge occurs. Designing and producing a new microprocessor requires huge supplies of highly trained people Money and time. So too for making a disk drive or even a keyboard or a Monitor. When mainframes and other big systems were King these jobs typically took place within a single company. Ism and digital equipment corp. Were self contained operations building most everything in House to their own private specifications then assembling them into a finished product As the last step. But pcs were different. Their Basic technology became readily available Early on. The Industry fragmented into hundreds of suppliers Here and in Asia each making components to Industry Standard specifications so that they could All be mixed and matched at will by assemblers to make a single working computer. It took ism years to figure out How important a change this was. In the a amps Susan Harris 1980s, it continued to Engineer Many of its own pc parts and to Force suppliers to meet special standards that were meant to ensure Quality but mostly slowed production and added costs. Ism priced its machines at 30 percent a 40 percent even 50 percent higher than the Market and got into real trouble. People discovered they could get a Fine computer at a lower Price by turning to the Little companies so they did. In the Early �?T90s, ism and other big companies that had tried to ignore this woke up and started cutting costs. Ism now stresses How of so Industry Standard its machines Are. Compaq computer corp. Too. So building pcs is an easy business to enter. These Days its also an easy one to a ave in bankruptcy. The big companies have been expanding like mad of late As they approach the Little companies prices a if the difference is not that much Many buyers would rather go with a Brand they know. Research company International data corp. Predicts that the Industry Stop 10 companies will account for 70 percent of the Market this year up from 50 percent in 1992. The Little companies that remain still generally offer better prices than the big ones though the spread Between them is not As big. Today they typically stress attention to customer whims. Know exactly what you want Well build precisely that machine for you. You can even watch. Eroles to and computer successor to the company that formerly ran a Chain of video rental stores in the Washington area was Selling National brands said Orhan onaran its president. But people came in and wanted certain computers. Built in certain  so Eroles is doing that. Many stress their local roots and that the factory though that a rather a grand word for it is right there in the shopping Center not half a continent away. If you be got a problem you can. Bring the machine in and the very Guy in Blue jeans who built it might be on duty curious As to what went wrong. A a we be got quite a bit fewer customers than ism or Compaq a said Aaron Reese an account executive at Leeco. He Means that As a strength a the company has time to Deal with  of the build to order shops aim at the business customer. That Way they can sell 10,20 or 100 machines at a time. Computer president Ben Saleh estimates that Only about 10 percent of his business is with retail Consumers. Compared to Consumers corporate buyers May feel More secure about going with Small companies. They done to care if machines Don t come with Glossy brochures. If they re suspicious of Quality they have the expertise to open up the Box and Check what a inside. And if a computer maker Isnit around to Honor its warranty in a year that a too bad but no disaster. The corporate computer manager knows that these machines Are built from Industry Standard parts which can be swapped out with new ones bought at a superstore in the suburbs. That s the reason after All that the company was Able to set up in the first  serb demands 64% of Bosnia Sarajevo Bosnia and Herzegovina apr a bosnian serbian Leader publicly spelling out the serbs territorial position for the first time monday demanded that any peace plan leave serbs 64 percent of Bosnia. The serbs who now hold 70 percent of Bosnia rejected an International peace plan that would give them 49 percent. The rest would go to a Muslim croatian federation. The new territorial demand made by the speaker of the bosnian serbs Assembly was Likely to be rejected by the authors of the peace plan who had insisted it be accepted As is. In the past the serbs indicated that they could accept an agreement giving them about half of Bosnia. But monday Momcilo Krajisnik the bosnian serbs As Sembly speaker was More specific. A serbs Are for peace but peace based on serb ownership of 64 percent of former Bosnia Herzegovina and their right to self determination a he said. Bosnian serbs who comprised about one third of Bosnia a population before the War began nearly 21/2 years ago and lived mostly in Rural areas claim that is the amount of land they rightfully owned in Bosnia. Bosnian serbs meanwhile confirmed that they had rounded up More than 100 Muslim men from a northeastern town and placed them in a labor Camp the red Cross said monday. The United nations also said More than 300 other muslims a women children and elderly a were expelled from the town Bike Lina in the past three weeks. Sixty four of them arrived in Tula late saturday and said bosian serbian soldiers had forced them from their Homes and crowded them into a darkened room for four Days. They also said they had been beaten robbed and threatened Lisa Jones a red Cross spokeswoman said a list of 111 detained muslims submitted to her Agency last week was the first serbian confirmation that Large numbers of Muslim men had been taken to a Camp at to pare in northeastern Bosnia Over the past few weeks. The serbs have refused to let red Gross staff visit the Camp. Weekend Road accidents kill 57 in Spain Madrid Spain a fifty seven people were killed in Highway accidents in Spain Over the weekend making the period one of the deadliest this year. A traffic department spokeswoman said monday that the 57 people died in 46 accidents reported Between 3 . Friday and Midnight sunday. Forty four people were seriously injured in accidents Over the same period. The death toll compared badly with the first weekend in August when 34 people were killed in Highway accidents As millions of spaniards took to the roads to begin their summer holidays. A Spain a highways rank among the most dangerous in the 12-nation european Union with dozens of people being killed each week especially during the summer months. Traffic department statistics show 4,732 people died in Highway accidents last year. Surge in aids threatening Africa Asia experts warn Yokohama Japan a about 3 million people around the world were infected with the aids virus in past years and a looming aids explosion in Asia could drive the toll far higher experts said monday. _. J while the infection rate has levelled off in Western countries the latest figures portray an epidemic that is still raging out of control in much of the world especially Africa and Asia. A a a in All the world health organization estimates that 17 million people have been infected with his the aids virus. Three million of them got it in the Las year alone More than Ever before. Sub saharan Africa is still the part o the world most devastated by aids. About 10 million infected people live there. Or. Michael Merson head of the world health organizations aids pro Gram outlined details of the global Epi Demic at the 10th International Confer ence on aids which is being held of the first time in Asia