One-time PC giant AST Research is to close, with parent company Samsung Electronics announcing yesterday that it would set up a new joint-venture computer sales firm in the United States.
A group of US investors led by Beny Alagem, co-founder of computer maker Packard Bell NEC, will invest US$12.5 million for a 65 per cent stake in AST Computers, now owned by Samsung.
Samsung will take the minority share of 35 per cent in the new company, formed by spinning off the sales division of AST, a Samsung affiliate in Irvine, California. Samsung said it planned to close AST.
The new sales firm would have the right to use the AST brand name and a large intellectual property portfolio of AST, Samsung officials said.
They said AST's operations would be immediately reduced to providing only after-sales service of computers that had been sold by AST.
AST was founded in 1979 by three engineers.
One of the world's top five PC makers as recently as 1993, AST also dominated the mainland's PC market in the early 1990s.