Gateway sells Amiga brand to former executive

PC vendor Gateway sold its Amiga trademark and remaining Amiga computers on Monday to a company that believes it can revive the brand.Gateway acquired the remnants of the 14 year old Amiga technology and its brand on 31 March, 1997. The company said at the time that it would revive the machine originally made by Commodore Business Machines, which filed for bankruptcy in 1994.

But it has produced little news for the intensely loyal Amiga user base over the years and provided even less information on its plans.

The firm has now sold the Amiga name to Amino Development, a startup headed by Bill McEwen - a former Gateway marketing executive who plans to restore the brand. He has, according to unconfirmed US reports, bought the rights for about $5 million.

McEwan said: "This is a very exciting day and now an even more exciting tomorrow. We can finish the job that was started 15 years ago."

Amino also purchased the rights to Internet domain names for websites and email addresses that relate to Amiga. But the deal does not include the transfer of Tom Schmidt, Amiga's president, or other staff. Gateway has also retained the 47 Amiga patents it acquired for $13 million.

Gateway also plans to launch its own business to business branding campaign for its Wintel PC range. Gateway@Work will begin its business to business advertising campaign on Monday to target the business, education and government markets.

Ron Smith, vice president of marketing at the Gateway Business unit, said: "Our sales to business customers represent approximately half of our company's overall sales, yet most people think of Gateway only as a consumer PC company."

He claimed however that the Gateway@Work campaign was more than a logo, "it's our way of doing business."

The new marketing effort comes as rivals such as Dell and Hewlett-Packard begin to make strides into Gateway's traditional consumer PC space. According to IDC, Gateway's share of the US PC server sector declined shipment terms during the third quarter to 2.3 per cent from 4.3 per cent a year earlier.