Admist their announcement of choosing PowerPC as the next Amiga CPU, they let on the fact that they would not be making new Amigas themselves, but licencing it to other companies.
There has been confusion as to what Amiga International were doing regarding new machines; the A1200s and A4000s currently on sale are apparantely just old stock, and not new machines. At Computer '97, they stated that new machines would be released for Christmas '98, but apparantely this is not to be the case... so is licencing only a good thing?
Firstly, licencing in general is an excellent decision for the Amiga, for all sorts of reasons!
The most immediate fact is that it gives us new machines now; even if AI were developing new machines, Christmas '98 is a long way off, but we already have completely new machines based on new motherboards (the Access, BoXeR and DCE A5000/A6000), not to mention numerous A1200T and A4000T clones. In the next few months, we should hopefully see Amigas with PPC and PCI slots as standard.
Another advantage is of course price - competition will force price down (and even more so with AI not making machines themselves - see later). Mac clones seem to be far cheaper than equivalent 'official' Apple machines for example.
And one huge advantage is the availability of different machines. Up until now, the Amiga range has been rather limited, so much so that the majority of users today have just one machine - the A1200 (even if they are upgraded in a multitude of different ways). With licencing, you can expect a range of choice far greater than a single company could offer. Should the 'new Amiga' have IDE or SCSI? Well, with licencing, you could have the choice yourself - no more of this buying an IDE machine, and having to spend extra on a SCSI interface.
Even more so, we can see the Amiga returning to its niche markets, and holding them far more strongly than before. The Access is a perfect example of this; before, A1200s and CD32s have been used for low end multimedia purposes, even though they weren't specifically designed for this. The Access is, though, and will offer more at a lower price, because it doesn't have to cater for your average home user. At the high end, forget the A4000; imagine Amigas specifically designed for Video and 3D rendering, with PPC and maybe Video Toaster-like features as standard.
If Amiga International aren't making new machines themselves, things will be even better in many ways. If they were, than they wouldn't want clones to be competing with their machines; as a result, they may decide to increase licence charges, or even withhold them. But if they aren't producing machines themselves, then they can give out licences, and let them all compete with each other, giving lower prices.
There are some disadvantages to be considered, though. The problem is that, at least initially, the licencees will be small companies compared with Amiga International, with the might of Gateway 2000 behind them. As a result, we would expect that AI could offer as lower prices, due to economies of scale, than 3rd party companies. There is the point of advertising, in that there will be no 'official' machines for Amiga International to advertise - what will they be spending those 'millions' on? Hopefully, they will be advertising the Amiga name and technology in general. Also, we must consider distribution. If it is left up to cloners, seeing Amigas in shops would be unlikely, where as Amiga International and Gateway 2000 would have better success, especially worldwide. Hopefully, AI will offer assistance to cloners in getting Amigas into shops.
In my opinion, the advantages of licencing, and not producing new machines themselves far outweigh the disadvantages, as long as the problems of advertising and distribution are tackled.
What is more, by not producing Amigas, AI can concentrate resources on advancing the Amiga technology.
Mark