Confirmation of Initial Soviet PC Order Reported : Foreign trade: Phoenix Group says it will supply 700 personal computers to the U.S.S.R., the first concrete evidence that the joint venture is becoming a reality.
The Phoenix Group International said Thursday that it has received confirmation of an initial order to supply 770 personal computers to the Soviet Union as part of a U.S.-Soviet joint venture announced last September.
Phoenix, a technology investment company headed by former Western Digital Chairman Charles Missler, said it will ship the PCs to the Soviet trade organization Electronorgtechnica in February. The Irvine company said it will receive more than $1 million for the order.
“We are delighted to receive confirmation of the Soviet purchase contract at the beginning of the new year,” Missler said.
In announcing the deal with the Phoenix Group last September, Soviet officials said the joint venture would supply up to 6 million PCs to Soviet schools and other computer users .
Some industry and trade specialists have been skeptical of the Phoenix deal, questioning whether a tiny company like American PC, a Phoenix Group subsidiary that is supposed to supply the computers, could handle such a major deal.
More doubts were raised recently when John French, president of Irvine-based American PC, disclosed in a sworn statement filed as part of a lawsuit that neither Phoenix nor American PC had a firm contractual commitment to sell 6 million PCs to the Soviet Union. French’s statement seemed to contradict the joint venture announcement last September.
French’s statement was made in a lawsuit filed in November against the Phoenix Group and American PC by Michael Kolsy, American PC’s chairman. Kolsy alleges in the suit that Phoenix illegally tried to dilute his one-third ownership interest in American PC in a debt-for-stock conversion. A Phoenix official has said that Kolsy’s suit is “without merit.”
Missler said the confirmation of the first shipment “will accelerate the Soviet joint venture program and answer skeptics who thought the Soviets would not confirm their purchase contract with American PC.”
