Newer Technology To Shut Doors [Updated]

The ultra-difficult Macintosh upgrade market has claimed another victim. Newer Technology has announced that the company will cease operation and, pending shareholder approval, file for bankruptcy sometime after the 1st of the year.

Newer, Sonnet, XLR8, and PowerLogix had been the surviving upgrade card manufacturers after MacTell closed their doors in 1999. The upgrade market, particularly for the Mac platform, has always been a difficult business. However, the events of the last year have certainly made an already tricky situation even more difficult. Appleis inability to ship computers at higher clock speeds has impacted the upgrade market as well, leaving very little room for newer users to upgrade, and very little motivation for older users to do the same. Many of the same factors that have led to Appleis slower than expected computer sales have also hit the upgrade makers hard, particularly Newer.

MacCentral is reporting in an excellent piece by Brad Gibson that all but a handful of Newer employees were laid off last week, and the plan of action from here is to be decided at a January 8th shareholdersi meeting.

You can also find some very interesting behind the scenes reading from the folks at MacCPU. Bob Moriarty has written a piece describing his dealings with Newer Technology when MacCPU was in the upgrade reselling market.