MSI Unveils Two Advanced Software Lines

MSI Data Corp., a Costa Mesa electronics manufacturer struggling to regain its momentum, Tuesday unveiled two software programs designed to increase the potential uses of its hand-held inventory-counting devices.

Because both programs are written in one of the most simple computer languages available, MSI executives claim that they will appeal to a larger number of potential buyers.

Earlier MSI programs, company officials said, were written in a language known to relatively few programmers, and customers often had difficulty using them.

Although Tuesday’s announcement does not represent a major step for MSI, it does offer yet more evidence that the company is fighting hard to win back its leadership position among makers of portable inventory-counting devices, a product MSI invented 18 years ago.

“It’s not a change in direction, it’s an improvement,” explained William Bowers, MSI’s chairman and founder. “It’s a matter of doing things better than we have done in the past.”

In recent years, MSI has seen its share of the market gradually slip from about 60% to its current 40% of all domestic sales. In its 1985 fiscal year, ended March 30, the company lost $1.5 million, its first annual loss in a decade.

The move into more-easily used software, the programs which determine how electronic devices can be used, began late last year after Charles Strauch assumed MSI’s presidency.

Strauch, hired to revive MSI, discovered that the company had lost potential customers because its products had fewer possible applications than their competitors’ machines.

In November, just four months after arriving at MSI, Strauch engineered the purchase of Azuredata Inc., a small Redmond, Wash., company known for its software programming abilities.

The new programs unveiled Tuesday, called MSI Scoreplan and MSI Ubasic, are designed to work with the company’s new PDT product line.